Claude autonomously proves Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean over 11 days
scaling01 · x · 2026-09-05
Anthropic reports that Claude, working largely autonomously over 11 days, produced the first complete computer-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in the Lean programming language.
Background
- FLT, conjectured in 1637, was proven by Andrew Wiles in 1995 in a 129-page proof that took months to verify; a community formalization effort led by Kevin Buzzard (Imperial College London) began in 2024.
- Anthropic researcher Tianyi Peng set out to test whether Claude could make progress on formalizing it.
The result
- In 11 days Claude wrote 13 million lines of Lean and proved 29,500 intermediate theorems, yielding the first end-to-end machine-checked proof of FLT.
- Buzzard called it "an extraordinary autoformalization achievement."
- Anthropic argues this suggests AI can compress multi-year community formalization projects into days, with implications for research mathematics.
Related event: Claude Produces First Formalized Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 11 Days(52 posts)→
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