Footnote:

Thus for instance, one may look at the well-known, three-volume History of the Theory of Numbers published in 1918 by Leonard Eugene Dickson. Out of close to eight hundred pages and thirty seven chapters of this book, Dickson devoted a forty five page long chapter in order to give the names of 300 publications devoted theretofore to FLT (ever since 1630!). This is a very low absolute number by all accounts, but the main point to notice is that the immense majority of these articles are just very short pieces of rather unimportant mathematics. Most mathematicians listed by Dickson in this chapter are far from prominent, and when a renowned mathematician is mentioned, then he appears with very minor, and indeed marginal works.

In Gauss' epoch-making Disquisitiones Aritmeticae (1800) FLT is not mentioned. The book that summarizes the state-of-the-art by the end of the nineteenth century is Hilbert's Zahlbericht (1895). In this book only a very short section, of one-and-a-half page discusses the existing proof for regular primes.

Much more evidence could be adduced here to attest for the lack of real interest in (other than a basic curiosity) and direct involvement with, FLT from the side of mathematicians throughout history.

  Calculating the Limits of Poetic License:
Fictional Narrative and the History of Mathematics
Leo Corry - Tel Aviv University