Paul Friedrich Wolfskehl (30 June 1856 in
Darmstadt – 13 September 1906 in Darmstadt), was a physician with an interest in mathematics. He bequeathed 100,000 marks (equivalent to 1,000,000 pounds in 1997 money) to the first person to prove
Fermat's Last Theorem
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers , , and satisfy the equation for any integer value of greater than 2. The cases and have been ...
.
He was the younger of two sons of a banker, Joseph Carl Theodor Wolfskehl. His elder brother, the jurist Wilhelm Otto Wolfskehl, took over the family bank after the death of his father. From 1875 to 1880 Paul Wolfskehl studied medicine at the Universities of
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
,
Tübingen
Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...
and
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
. In 1880 he received his
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...
from the
Heidelberg University
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public university, public research university in Heidelberg, B ...
.
At about this time, he began to suffer from
multiple sclerosis, which eventually forced him to pursue another career. From 1880 to 1883 he studied mathematics at the universities of
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
and
Bern. In 1887 he
habilitated at the
Technische Hochschule Darmstadt and became a
Privatdozent for mathematics at the university.
There are a number of theories concerning the prize's origin. The most romantic is that he was spurned by a young lady and decided to commit suicide, but was distracted by what he thought was an error in a paper by
Ernst Kummer
Ernst Eduard Kummer (29 January 1810 – 14 May 1893) was a German mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned ...
, who had detected a flaw in
Augustin Cauchy
Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy (, ; ; 21 August 178923 May 1857) was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He w ...
's attempted proof of Fermat's famous problem. This rekindled his will to live and, in gratitude, he established the prize. This story was traced by Philip Davis and William Chinn in their 1969 book ''3.1416 and All That'' to renowned mathematician
Alexander Ostrowski
Alexander Markowich Ostrowski ( uk, Олександр Маркович Островський; russian: Алекса́ндр Ма́ркович Остро́вский; 25 September 1893, in Kiev, Russian Empire – 20 November 1986, in Mont ...
, who supposedly heard it from another, unidentified source. Another more prosaic story has it that Wolfskehl wanted to leave as little as possible to his shrewish wife. Yet another story, told in ''The Man Who Loved Only Numbers'' by
Paul Hoffman, tells that Wolfskehl actually missed his supposed suicide time because he was in the library studying the Theorem. Upon realizing that, he concluded that the contemplation of mathematics was more rewarding than a beautiful woman so he decided not to kill himself. He bankrolled the Theorem because it "saved his life". On June 27, 1997, the prize was finally won by
Andrew Wiles
Sir Andrew John Wiles (born 11 April 1953) is an English mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specializing in number theory. He is best known for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he was awa ...
. By then, due in part to the
hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...
Germany suffered after the end of World War I, the award had dwindled to £30,000.
The play ''From Abstraction'' by
Robert Thorogood
Robert Thorogood (born 1972) is an English screenwriter and novelist. He is the creator of the BBC One murder mystery series '' Death in Paradise''. He won France Film's "En Route to France" award in 2012.
Early life
Thorogood was educated at U ...
is based on the life of Wolfskehl. It was broadcast on
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
on 1 November 2006 and 29 August 2008.
See also
*
Andrew Beal
Daniel Andrew Beal (born November 29, 1952) is an American banker, businessman, investor, and amateur mathematician. He is a Dallas-based businessman who accumulated wealth in real estate and banking. Born and reared in Lansing, Michigan, Beal i ...
, a Dallas banker who has offered $1,000,000 for a proof or disproof of
Beal's conjecture
*
Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a proof by British mathematician Andrew Wiles of a special case of the modularity theorem for elliptic curves. Together with Ribet's theorem, it provides a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem. Both Fermat's ...
*
Millennium Prize Problems
The Millennium Prize Problems are seven well-known complex mathematical problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. The Clay Institute has pledged a US$1 million prize for the first correct solution to each problem. According ...
Notes
References
* Ball, W. W. R. and Coxeter, H. S. M., '' Mathematical Recreations and Essays'', 13th ed. New York: Dover, pp. 69–73, 1987.
* Barner, K. "Paul Wolfskehl and the Wolfskehl Prize". ''Not. Amer. Math. Soc.'' 44, 1294–1303, 1997.
* Hoffman, P., ''The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth'', New York: Hyperion, pp. 193–199, 1998.
External links
Details about Wolfskehl from Simon Singh, author of the book ''Fermat's Last Theorem''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfskehl, Paul
1856 births
1906 deaths
19th-century German Jews
19th-century German mathematicians
German industrialists
Technische Universität Darmstadt alumni
Academic staff of Technische Universität Darmstadt
Heidelberg University alumni
20th-century German mathematicians
Scientists from Darmstadt