# Elementary published (but possibly flawed) proof of FLT

Homework Helper
I stumbled across this in an obituary article for its author: Prof Chike Obi (1921-2008), reputed to be the first Sub-Saharan African to hold a doctorate in Maths (Cambridge, 1947), later at MIT, returned to Nigeria (Univ of Ibadan) in 1959.

He claimed to have discovered an elementary proof that could have been created by Fermat. It was published in about 1997 in the US journal "Algebra, Groups and Geometries", Vol 15, special issue #3, pp 289-298.

The obit article simply says "However it has been questioned whether this elementary proof stands up".

Is this, and/or any discussion of it and/or attempts to fix it, in the public domain (i.e. accessible free by non-academics)?

Gold Member
Following the references on his wikipedia page, I found a short review of the proof said to have been published in Mathematical Reviews:

This is a naive attempt to prove Fermat's last theorem using techniques known only in Fermat's days. This time the error is on the bottom of page 292. The author states
that some numbers, having nothing to do with the equation, satisfy $a_{0}^2+b_{0}^2=c_{0}^2$. The conclusion is that a certain case of Fermat's last theorem is
solved. Using this technique one could prove any conjecture made in mathematics.

Reviewed by F. Beukers