Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem(anthropic.com)
763 points by jlebar 5 days ago | 500 comments
tl;dr: Anthropic used Claude to autonomously produce the first complete, computer-verified proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean, taking 11 days and generating 13 million lines of code across 29,500 intermediate theorems. The effort followed Wiles's proof (via the Darmon-Diamond-Taylor exposition) and succeeded after switching to Prove2Me, a collaborative platform that coordinated multiple agents via a DAG of theorem statements. Kevin Buzzard reviewed the proof and suggested it signals a major step toward automated formalization of modern mathematics, potentially reducing referee burden and catching errors in the existing corpus.
HN Discussion:
  • ~Recommends Buzzard's blog post for context on what the accomplishment does and doesn't mean
  • Article buries the lead; significance for math verification should be more prominent
  • Skepticism about correctness given 13M lines of code potentially having bugs or exploiting Lean issues
  • Demonstrates LLMs can tackle much harder verifiable problems, opening up broader applications
  • ~Proof adds no mathematical value but shows promise for formal verification of papers/systems