Pierre de Fermat (1607 – 1665) was a French mathematician whose mathematical work lead to the development of probability and statistics, the infinitesimal calculus, and of analytic geometry. He may be best know for his famous Fermat’s Last Theorem, a mathematical problem that went unsolved for centuries before it was finally solved by British mathematician Andrew Wiles in 1994.
Fermat was born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France, attended the University of Orleans in 1623 where he studied law despite showing an early interest in mathematics. He received the title of councillor at the High Court of Judicature in Toulouse in 1631 and held this position for the rest of his life.
In the 1630s Fermat began some of his pioneering work in analytic geometry. His work was circulated around in manuscript form and he showed to how find maximum point, minimum point, and tangents to curves. He found techniques that were equivalent to differentiation and integral calculus. These techniques were helpful to Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz when they formulated their theories of calculus.
Along with his pioneering work in analytic geometry and laying the groundwork for the invention of calculus, Fermat had a tremendous contribution to number theory – a branch of mathematics devoted to the study of integers. His study of Pell’s equation, perfect numbers, amicable numbers, and prime numbers ultimately led to the discovery of a new set of numbers that would be named after him: Fermat numbers.
The work he is best known for is called Fermat’s Last Theorem. While working on number theory he had scribbled in the margin on a text that he had discovered a proof for an equation, but that the proof was too large for him to fit in the margin. For over 350 years mathematicians were unable to obtain the proof until his theorem was finally proven in 1994 by Andrew Wiles.