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https://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/obi_chike.html?utm_source=copilot.com | https://www.math.buffalo.edu/mad/PEEPS/obi-chike-fermat-review.html
The Beukers “review” falls apart the moment you look at it closely, because it doesn’t behave like a real mathematical critique at all. It opens with a casual swipe about Obi’s work being a “naive attempt”, which is already a bad sign since serious reviewers don’t start with attitude before analysis. Then it gestures vaguely at an “error on the bottom of page 292” without quoting the line, without explaining the logic, and without showing how the supposed mistake actually breaks the argument.
That’s not how mathematicians refute anything - that’s how someone avoids doing the work. The complaint about Obi introducing numbers that satisfy a02+b02=c02 is even stranger, because auxiliary triples and unrelated bounding constructions are completely normal in number theory. If the reviewer thinks that’s illegitimate, he should explain why, not just wave it off as irrelevant.
Instead, he jumps straight to a sarcastic throwaway line about how “one could prove any conjecture” using Obi’s technique, which isn’t an argument, it’s just snark. There’s no outline of Obi’s method, no reconstruction of the steps, no counterexample, no contradiction, no demonstration that the approach collapses for general n>2. It’s basically a few sentences of irritation dressed up as a review. And the fact that this flimsy note is the only surviving commentary while Obi’s actual paper - published in a real journal - is nowhere to be found in the digitized archives, even though other papers from the same volume are preserved, makes the whole thing look less like a legitimate refutation and more like a convenient dismissal.
In short, the reviewer doesn’t prove Obi wrong. He doesn’t even try. He just declares it and walks away, which tells you more about the reviewer than about Obi’s mathematics.
Where is Prof. Chike Obi's published direct work, he used to claim a proof to Fermat Last Theorem?
-OneFocus
The Beukers “review” falls apart the moment you look at it closely, because it doesn’t behave like a real mathematical critique at all. It opens with a casual swipe about Obi’s work being a “naive attempt”, which is already a bad sign since serious reviewers don’t start with attitude before analysis. Then it gestures vaguely at an “error on the bottom of page 292” without quoting the line, without explaining the logic, and without showing how the supposed mistake actually breaks the argument.
That’s not how mathematicians refute anything - that’s how someone avoids doing the work. The complaint about Obi introducing numbers that satisfy a02+b02=c02 is even stranger, because auxiliary triples and unrelated bounding constructions are completely normal in number theory. If the reviewer thinks that’s illegitimate, he should explain why, not just wave it off as irrelevant.
Instead, he jumps straight to a sarcastic throwaway line about how “one could prove any conjecture” using Obi’s technique, which isn’t an argument, it’s just snark. There’s no outline of Obi’s method, no reconstruction of the steps, no counterexample, no contradiction, no demonstration that the approach collapses for general n>2. It’s basically a few sentences of irritation dressed up as a review. And the fact that this flimsy note is the only surviving commentary while Obi’s actual paper - published in a real journal - is nowhere to be found in the digitized archives, even though other papers from the same volume are preserved, makes the whole thing look less like a legitimate refutation and more like a convenient dismissal.
In short, the reviewer doesn’t prove Obi wrong. He doesn’t even try. He just declares it and walks away, which tells you more about the reviewer than about Obi’s mathematics.
Where is Prof. Chike Obi's published direct work, he used to claim a proof to Fermat Last Theorem?
-OneFocus
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