Determinants in the study of Thue's method and curves with prescribed singularities.
These are expository notes that accompany my talk at the 25th Journées Arithmétiques, July 2–6, 2007, Edinburgh, Scotland. I aim to shed light on the following two questions:(i)Given a Diophantine equation, what information can be obtained by following the strategy of Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem?(ii)Is it useful to combine this approach with traditional approaches to Diophantine equations: Diophantine approximation, arithmetic geometry, ...?