Pierre de Fermat

Also known as Fermat, Pierre Fermat

French mathematician and lawyer

AI overview

Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician and lawyer who made significant contributions to mathematics during the 17th century. He is most famous for Fermat's Last Theorem, a mathematical conjecture he wrote about that remained unproven for over 350 years and became one of the most important problems in mathematics.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Pierre
Gender: male
Citizenship: France
Place of birth: Beaumont-de-Lomagne
Place of death: Castres
Occupation: jurist
Employer: Parliament of Toulouse
Languages spoken: French
Notable work: Fermat number
Academic degree: Bachelor of Laws
Field of work: Fermat's Last Theorem
Image: Capitole Toulouse - Salle Henri-Martin - Buste de Pierre de Fermat.jpg
Number of children: 5
Significant event: cremation

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topic's main category: Category:Pierre de Fermat
Commons category: Pierre de Fermat
date of birth: 1607-00-00
date of death: 1665-01-12
Commons gallery: Pierre de Fermat
name in native language: Pierre de Fermat
influenced by: François Viète
writing language: French
ethnic group: French
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
Stack Exchange tag: hsm.stackexchange.com/tags/fermat
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
place of burial: Castres

Sources (10)

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Encyclopedic overview

Pierre de Fermat (/fɜːrˈmɑː/; French: [pjɛʁ də fɛʁma]; 17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French magistrate, polymath, and above all, a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for his Fermat's principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica. He was also a lawyer at the parlement of Toulouse, France, a poet, a skilled Latinist, and a Hellenist.

Biography

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pierre de Fermat” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.