Note written on the margins of his copy of claudegaspar bachets translation of the famous arithmetica of diophantus, this was taken as an indication of what became known as fermats last theorem, a correct proof for which would be found only 357 years later. He made major contributions to geometric optics, modern number theory, probability theory, analytic geometry, and is generally considered the father of differential calculus. The mesh of spirals occurs in fibonacci numbers because divergence angle of succession in a single spiral arrangement approaches the golden ratio. He did the primary developments of infinitesimal calculus. Matematico francese beaumontdelomagne, tarnetgaronne, 1601 castres 1665. Mathematical society, nothing is for free and the question is only. Born 17 aug 1601 in beaumontdelomagne, francedied 12 jan 1665 in castres, france. Pierre had a brother and two sisters and was almost certainly brought up in the town of his birth.
He wrote it in the margin of the book diophantus arithmetica. He was a competent classical scholar and philologist, was fluent in five languages, and composed poetry. Pierre was a lawyer by profession, but historians give him the credit of a genius mathematician. Independently of descartes, fermat discovered the fundamental principle of. Despite these impressive accomplishments, however, it is as a mathematician that he is best remembered. He is best remembered for his last theorem, the proof of which defied the best efforts of mathematicians for over three centuries. He served in the legislature at toulouse and was named to the criminal court in 1638. Many people see him as the father of modern calculus his method of finding the biggest and smallest ordinates of curved lines also makes him a contributor to differential calculus, which was not known at that time his studies in the theory of numbers.
It works well as a quick, textbookfree, inclass, or homework activity. There is some dispute about the date of pierres birth as given above, since it is possible that he had an elder brother who had also been given the name pierre but who died young. Pierre fermat was born in beaumontdelomagne, in southern france in late 1607 or early 1608. He got his education at home and received a law baccalaureate from the university of orleans, after which in the year 1634, he got a post of a local councilor for his local parliament at.
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