It is widely believed that Kummer was led to his "ideal complex numbers" by his interest in Fermat's Last Theorem; there is even a story often told that Kummer, like Lamé, believed he had proven Fermat's Last Theorem until Lejeune Dirichlet told him his argument relied on unique factorization; but the story was first told by Kurt Hensel in 1910 and the evidence indicates it likely derives from a confusion by one of Hensel's sources.