The long-running saga of Fermat’s last theorem was finally concluded in 1995. The nearly 360-year-old conjecture states that xn + yn = zn has no positive integer solutions if x, y, z, and n are positive integers and n is three or more. In 1993 Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a proof, based on new results in algebraic number theory. By 1994, however, a gap in the proof had emerged. The gap was repaired--or, more accurately, circumvented--by Wiles and former student Richard Taylor of the University of Cambridge. The difficulty in Wiles’s proof arose from an attempt to construct a so-called Euler system. The new approach involves making a detailed study of algebraic structures known as Hecke algebras, a task in which Taylor’s contribution proved crucial. The complete proof was confirmed by experts and published in the Annals of Mathematics.
Fruitful revisionism of a different kind took place in the important area of gauge field theory, in which ideas originating in mathematical physics for the purpose of describing subatomic particles and their interactions were being applied to topology--the study of the properties that a region of space retains under deformation--with spectacular consequences. Paramount among them was the discovery, made in 1983 by Simon Donaldson of the University of Oxford, that the properties of four-dimensional Euclidean space are exceptional compared with those of the spaces of all other dimensions. Donaldson’s discovery was based on the Yang-Mills field equations in quantum mechanics, introduced in the 1950s by the physicists Chen Ning Yang and Robert L. Mills to describe the interactions between particles in the atomic nucleus. The equations possess special solutions known as instantons--particle-like wave packets that occupy a small region of space and exist for a tiny instant. Donaldson observed that instanton solutions of the Yang-Mills equations encode topological information about the space for which the equations are posed. But just as mathematics was adjusting to the powerful new techniques arising from that insight, Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., developed an entirely new system of equations that can be substituted for those of Yang and Mills. Witten’s ideas, far from supplanting the earlier approach, were shedding light on how the Yang-Mills equations work. Witten’s equations replace instantons with magnetic monopoles, hypothetical particles possessing a single magnetic pole--mathematically a far more tractable setting. The early payoff included proofs of several long-standing conjectures in low-dimensional topology.
A long-standing question in dynamical systems theory, i.e., the genuineness of the chaos observed in the Lorenz equations, was answered. The equations were developed by the meteorologist Edward Lorenz in 1963 in a model of atmospheric convection. Using a computer, he showed that the solutions were highly irregular--small changes in the input values produced large changes in the solutions, which led to apparently random behaviour of the system. In modern parlance such behaviour is called chaos. Computers, however, use finite precision arithmetic, which introduces round-off errors. Is the apparent chaos in the Lorenz equations an artifact of finite precision, or is it genuine? Konstantin Mischaikow and Marian Mrozek of the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that chaos really is present. Ironically their proof was computer-assisted. Nevertheless, that fact did not render the proof "unrigorous" because the role of the computer was to perform certain lengthy but routine calculations, which in principle could be done by hand. Indeed, Mischaikow and Mrozek justified using the computer by setting up a rigorous mathematical framework for finite precision arithmetic. Their main effort went into devising a theory to pass from finite precision to infinite precision. In short, they found a way to parlay the computer’s approximations into an exact result.
A famous problem in recreational mathematics was solved by political scientist Steven Brams of New York University and mathematician Alan Taylor of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. The problem is to devise a proportional envy-free allocation protocol. An allocation protocol is a systematic method for dividing some desired object--traditionally a cake--among several people. It is proportional if each person is satisfied that he or she is receiving at least a fair share, and it is envy-free if each person is satisfied that no one is receiving more than a fair share. This area of mathematics was invented in 1944 by the mathematician Hugo Steinhaus. For two people the problem is solved by the "I cut, you choose" protocol; Steinhaus’ contribution was a proportional but not envy-free protocol for three people. In the early 1960s John Selfridge and John Horton Conway independently found an envy-free protocol for three people, but the problem remained open for four or more people. Brams and Taylor discovered highly complex proportional envy-free protocols for any number of people. Because many areas of human conflict focus upon similar questions, their ideas had potential conflict-resolving applications in economics, politics, and social science.
Responding to criticism from chemists around the world, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) in 1995 decided to reconsider the definitive names that it had announced the previous year for elements 101-109. The decision was unprecedented in the history of IUPAC, an association of national chemistry organizations formed in 1919 to set uniform standards for chemical names, symbols, constants, and other matters. IUPAC’s Commission on Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry had recommended adoption of names for the elements that, in several cases, differed significantly from names selected by the elements’ discoverers.
The extremely heavy elements were synthesized between the 1950s and 1980s by researchers in the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet Union. Although the discoverers had exercised their traditional right to select names, the names never received IUPAC’s stamp of approval because of disputes over priority of discovery. The conflicting claims were resolved by an international commission in 1993, and the discoverers submitted their chosen names to IUPAC. An international furor ensued after the IUPAC nomenclature panel ignored many of the submissions and made its own recommendations. IUPAC’s rejection of the name seaborgium for element 106 caused particular dismay in the U.S. Discoverers of the element had named it for Glenn T. Seaborg, Nobel laureate and codiscoverer of plutonium and several other heavy elements. In response, IUPAC’s General Assembly decided that names for elements 101-109 would revert to provisional status during a five-month review process scheduled to begin in January 1996. Chemists and member organizations were to submit comments on the names for IUPAC’s reconsideration.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) directed its publications to continue using the recommendations of its own nomenclature committee for the duration of IUPAC’s review. All of the ACS’s names for elements 104-108 differed from those on IUPAC’s list.