Failing for 130,000 Days Doesn’t Mean You Shouldn’t Try Again

A few decades ago, when I was in school, our math teacher gave us an assignment for homework. After a few days, the teacher came clean. This was what we had to prove:
It is impossible to separate any power higher than the second into two like powers.
You might recognize it in this form:
If an integer n is greater than 2, then the equation
aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ
has no solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c.

In 1637, Pierre de Fermat wrote on the margin of a famous math book he owned, "I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." This note eventually became known as Fermat's Last Theorem, probably the biggest most famous mathematical problem ever. It looks so simple and innocent, understandable even to kids, so it is only natural that all the mathematicians tried to prove this simple statement. They all tried. They all failed. For more than three and a half centuries, all the great mathematicians took a shot at this problem to no avail. It seemed like this problem was beyond human capabilities.

Then, one day out of the blue in 1993, an unknown mathematician named Andrew Wiles shocked the world. After working on the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture (the last huge impossible missing piece of the puzzle) alone and in secrecy for 7 years, he completed the proof using modular functions and elliptic curves. He achieved what was thought to be impossible for 358 years, in what is considered by many as the greatest most brilliant mathematical piece ever written. Later, a mistake was found in his proof, but he managed to fix it after another extremely frustrating year of failing. I’m skipping a lot of details, so I must recommend the fascinating book by Simon Singh.

So, the next time people tell you "Drop it, it’s too difficult", you can refer them to this.

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p.s. Why fish don’t talk? ‘Cause they’re busy! (credit goes to my 3.5 year old son)