Fermat's Last Theorem had been one of the great conjectures in number theory until its eventual solution by Andrew Wiles in 1994. I will review a bit of its history, and introduce the notion of elliptic curves, the ultimate vehicle for the proof. The talk will conclude by connecting Wiles' work on elliptic curves with Fermat's Last Theorem via a beautiful result of Ken Ribet.

Prof. Sheldon Kamienny received his Ph. D. from Harvard in 1981 as a student of Barry Mazur and Andrew Wiles. He has taught at M.I.T., U. C. Berkeley, Ohio State, University of Arizona, and since 1991, at USC. He has also been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, both a member and research professor at MSRI in Berkeley, and a Sloan Foundation fellow. His research area is the arithmetic geometry of modular forms and abelian varieties.

This lecture is aimed at a general audience. All students and faculty are encouraged to attend.