KDkdavis·Sep 4, 2026
Impressive! Buzzard's group[1] got scooped.
[1] https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT
In Formalizing Fermat's Last TheoremImperialCollegeLondon
FLT
Lean2024–2026
ImperialCollegeLondon / FLT
FLT
Ongoing Lean formalisation of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
8Distinct people
9Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.1KGitHub stars
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What it is
Ongoing Lean formalisation of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
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HN mentions by month9 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2024-12-12 15:49:35 UTC to 2026-09-04 18:55:22 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 2024 | 2024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jan 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2025 | 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2025 | 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2025 | 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2025 | 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2025 | 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2025 | 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Aug 2025 | 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Sep 2025 | 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Oct 2025 | 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2025 | 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2025 | 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2026 | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2026 | 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2026 | 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2026 | 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2026 | 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jun 2026 | 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2026 | 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Aug 2026 | 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2026 | 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
9 sourcesI'm not a mathematician and AI doesn't answer very well. Could someone tell us how big an endeavour this is: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT ?
(the site is : "An ongoing multi-author open source project to formalise a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover.")
In Solving Fermat: Andrew WilesA Lean Formalisation of Fermat's Last Theorem
2 points · Open discussionWiles' original proof was flawed. It wasn't due to "sloppy logic", it was a subtle misapplication of a theorem when the conditions for its use weren't met. It wasn't merely a mistake or gap in the exposition ... the error required finding a different approach and it took Wiles and Taylor a year to patch the proof.
There are multiple reasons for formalizing the proof in Lean ... see
https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT/blob/main/GENER...
P.S. "So that patching is exactly what I’m referring to."
No, it isn't.
"The mathematicians can see the idea that’s true"
Mathematicians could not "see" that FLT was true, and they could not "see" that Wiles' original proof demonstrated it because it didn't. His original flawed proof showed how certain tools could be used, but it didn't establish the truth of FLT. There long had been speculation th
Read the rest
at it was undecidable, and it might still have been until Wiles and Taylor provided a correct proof.
From a previous comment by the same user: "The purpose of a proof is to show yourself and someone else why something is true."
The purpose of a proof of an assertion is to demonstrate that the assertion is true. Once that is done, the assertion can be treated as a theorem and other results can be built upon it.
The purpose for digitally formalizing a proof of a theorem that has already been accepted as proven by the mathematical community is multifold, as laid out at the link above.
https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT/blob/main/GENER...
"It will not be the original Wiles/Taylor-Wiles proof, but rather a "newer" proof which takes into account more recent developments due to Khare-Wintenberger, Kisin and many other people."
In Project to formalise a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in the Lean theorem proverThis is a nice overview of what this is, why they're doing it and why it's many years of work:
https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT/blob/main/GENER...
In Ongoing Lean formalization of the proof for Fermat's Last TheoremOngoing Lean formalization of the proof for Fermat's Last Theorem
127 points · Open discussionIf you're interested in this stuff at all, check out some code.
Example: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT/blob/main/FLT/M...
Also check out the blueprint, which describes the overall structure of the code:
https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/FLT/blueprint/
I'm very much an outside observer, but it is super interesting to see what Lean code looks like and how people contribute to it. Great thing is that there's no need for unittests (or, in some sense, the final proof statement is the unittest) :P
In Fermat's Last Theorem – how it’s going