Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat (
August 17,
1601 –
January 12,
1665) was a
French lawyer and
amateur mathematician who is generally given minor credit for the development of modern
calculus; in particular, for his work regarding tangents and stationary points. He is sometimes regarded as the "father" of, both,
differential calculus and number theory. He also made notable contributions to
analytic geometry and
probability.
Fermat was born near
Montauban,
France; he died at Castres.
Fermat worked on number theory while preparing an edition of
Diophantus, and the notes and comments thereon contained the numerous theorems of considerable elegance necessary to develop the theory of numbers.\nFermat is famous for his "Enigma" that was an extension of Pythagorean Theorem, also known as Fermat's Last Theorem.\nTogether with
René Descartes, Fermat was one of the two leading mathematicians of the first half of the
17th century. Independently of Descartes, he discovered the fundamental principle of
analytic geometry. Through his correspondence with
Blaise Pascal, he was a co-founder of the
theory of probability.
See also:\n*
Euler's conjecture\n*
Euler's theorem\n*
Fermat's Last Theorem\n*
Fermat's little theorem\n*
Fermat prime\n*
Fermat's principle\n*Fermat's spiral \n*
Fermat's pseudoprime\n*
List of amateur mathematicians\n*
Pell-Fermat's Diophantine equation\n*
Sophie Germain prime
External links
Fermat, Pierre
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