Pierre
de Fermat
is
perhaps
the most
famous
number
theorist
in history.
What
is less
widely
known
is that
for Fermat
mathematics
was only
an avocation:
by trade,
Fermat
was a
lawyer.
He
work
on maxima
and minima,
tangents,
and stationary
points,
earn him
minor credit
as a father
of calculus.
Independently
of Descartes,
he discovered
the fundamental
principle
of analytic
geometry.
And
through
his correspondence
with Pascal,
he was
a co-founder
of probability
theory.
But
he is probably
most well-known
for his
famous
"Enigma".
Fermat's
portrait is
inscribed
with this
famous
"Enigma",
which is
also known
as
Fermat's
Last Theorem.
It states
that
xn + yn = zn has
no whole number solution when n > 2.
Fermat,
having
posed his
theorem,
then wrote
"I
have
discovered
a truly
remarkable
proof
which
this
margin
is too
small
to contain."
The
proof Fermat
referred
to was
not to
be found,
and thus
began a
quest,
that spanned
the centuries,
to prove
Fermat's
Last Theorem.
Fermat's
image is
also overlaid
by Fermat's
spiral. Fermat's
spiral
(also
known as
a parabolic
spiral),
is a
type of
Archimedean
spiral,
and is named
after Fermat
who spent
considerable
time investigating
it.
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