Claude agents formalise Fermat's last theorem in Lean in 11 days
Anthropic says Claude agents converted Wiles and Taylor's existing Fermat proof into Lean in 11 days. Lean performed the final logical check on a formalisation of 13 million lines containing approximately 29,500 intermediate lemmas. The work puts every step of the proof completed in the 1990s into a computer-checkable form; it does not offer a new solution to the theorem.
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A 13-million-line formalisation in 11 days
According to Anthropic, a group of Claude agents formalised the proof of Fermat's last theorem in Lean within 11 days. The output reached 13 million lines of Lean code and included approximately 29,500 intermediate lemmas in the final version. That is more than five times the 2 million lines collected in Mathlib, the repository for formalised mathematics. Both reports give the duration and scale, while MoneyToday says dozens of agents took part.[1], [2]
A complete encoding of the existing proof
The agents did not solve the theorem by a new route. They translated the mathematical proof completed by Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor in the 1990s into a form in which Lean could derive every step. Mathematical writing can omit intermediate steps that specialists regard as evident; formalisation requires those gaps to be written out. A flaw was found after Wiles announced his proof in 1993, and Wiles and Taylor spent about a year repairing it. In the new work, Lean rather than another AI made the final logical check.[1], [2]
The large proof was divided into smaller lemmas
The work split the large proof into smaller lemmas that different agents could address; a result completed by one agent was used in another agent's harder step. Human experts occasionally supplied high-level direction. New Scientist reports that the agents several times lost track of the project's state. The team later used Prove2Me, a tool built for mathematicians to work together. The process also produced reusable formal pieces of algebra, harmonic analysis, geometry and number theory.[1], [2]
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