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Pierre de Fermat (French pronunciation: [pjɛːʁ dəfɛʁˈma], born Pierre Fermat; 17 August 1601 or 1607/8 – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his 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 the then unknown differential calculus, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for Fermat's Last Theorem, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica.
He communicated most of his work in letters to friends, often with little or no proof of his theorems. This allowed him to preserve his status as an "amateur" while gaining the recognition he desired. This naturally led to priority disputes with contemporaries such as Descartes and Wallis. He developed a close relationship with Blaise Pascal.
Pierre de Fermat in 1632[]
When Grantville appeared in May of 1631, Pierre de Fermat had already done some mathematical work, but had not yet done most of the work which had made him famous in the OTL. He and his wife arrived in Grantville in November of 1634, and he was one of the people in the staff cafeteria of the town's power plant when 11-year-old Blaise Pascal began figuring out how to build a hydraulic computer.
References[]
- ↑ Sources vary as to year of birth.
- ↑ http://math.ucsd.edu/programs/undergraduate/history_of_math_resource/history_papers/math_history_03.pdf
- ↑ It is mentioned that his wife was pregnant when she arrived in Grantville.