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ffaccount2 • yesterday at 10:26 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

(not a mathematician, but I played with lean as a hobby). No, this already existed - lean standard library was basically this, with hundreds of mathematicians working together to formalize basics of currently known math. But this is just very slow for a human.

I remember there being whole research groups trying to formalize a single (real world, as opposed to undergraduate) proof, and I remember reading that formalizing something like FLT is currently completely unfeasible.

In short, no, lean was not a tool to discover new math.


Replies

griffzhowl • yesterday at 11:06 AM

> formalizing something like FLT is currently completely unfeasible.

No, Kevin Buzzard is leading a project to formalise FLT for a couple of years now. Anthropic scooped him last month, but his project involves more than just producing a formal proof: https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2026/09/04/flt-anthropic-h...