🔬Claude Writes First Machine-Checked Fermat Proof in 11 Days
TL;DR
Anthropic published the first complete computer-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, written largely autonomously by Claude over 11 days. The run produced 13 million lines of Lean and 29,500 intermediate theorems.
Anthropic published the first complete computer-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, written largely autonomously by Claude over 11 days. The run produced 13 million lines of Lean and 29,500 intermediate theorems. Imperial's Kevin Buzzard, who leads the human formalization effort, called the result extraordinary.
Key Points
Published Sept 4, 2026 by Anthropic's science team
13 million lines of Lean written; 29,500 intermediate theorems proved
Run led by Tianyi Peng, whose Columbia group builds AI formalization tools
Wiles's 1995 proof ran 129 pages and took months of human verification
Buzzard kicked off the community Lean formalization effort in 2024
Why It Matters
Autoformalization at this scale means AI-generated mathematics can be mechanically checked instead of trusted. That attacks the review bottleneck, which is the part of research that does not scale with more compute.
Quick Facts
Comments
Be the first to comment
Enjoyed this article?
Get it daily. 7am. Free. Reads in 5 minutes.
Join 3,485 builders reading daily.