Pierre de Fermat

Also known as Fermat, Pierre Fermat

French mathematician and lawyer

OverviewAI-generated

Pierre de Fermat was a French mathematician, lawyer, judge, and polyglot born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne. He held the citizenship of France and spoke Latin and French. Fermat worked as a lawyer and judge for the Parliament of Toulouse, where he held the academic degree of Bachelor of Laws. His fields of work included number theory, mathematics, probability theory, and statute. He was influenced by Diophantus of Alexandria, Gerolamo Cardano, and François Viète.

Fermat’s notable works include Fermat's principle, Fermat's Last Theorem, Fermat's little theorem, and the Fermat point. He died in Castres in 1665. His writings, primarily in French, include Varia opera mathematica D. Petri de Fermat, senatoris tolosani and Précis des oeuvres mathématiques de P. Fermat. He is described in sources such as the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition.

Synthesized by Vinony from 33 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

In the Vinony graph

Vinony's link graph records 326 inbound references to Pierre de Fermat, and connects out to Latin, analytic geometry and Diophantus of Alexandria.

It sits within the topics 1601 births, 1665 deaths and 17th-century French judges.

Vinony links it to 97 Wikipedia language editions.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1601
Died: 1665
Works: 27

Top works

Varia opera mathematica D. Petri de Fermat, senatoris tolosani
Précis des oeuvres mathématiques de P. Fermat
Diophanti Alexandrini Arithmeticorum libri sex, et de numeris multangulis liber unus
Doctrinae analyticae inventum novum
Issledovanii︠a︡ po teorii chisel i diofantovu analizu

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Other

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 2
Total plays: 3

via Last.fm · Pierre de Fermat

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 36,510x
Going deeper with convolutions
· 2015 · cited 32,876x
PLINK: A Tool Set for Whole-Genome Association and Population-Based Linkage Analyses
· 2007 · cited 31,411x
Classification of Surgical Complications
· 2004 · cited 28,235x
The ERA5 global reanalysis
· 2020 · cited 24,208x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Et cette proposition est généralement vraie en toutes progressions et en tous nombres premiers; de quoi je vous envoierois la démonstration, si je n'appréhendois d'être trop long.”
“The result of my work has been the most extraordinary, the most unforeseen, and the happiest, that ever was; for, after having performed all the equations, multiplications, antitheses, and other operations of my method, and having finally finished the problem, I have found that my principle gives exactly and precisely the same proportion for the s which Monsieur Descartes has established.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Wikidata facts

Image: Capitole Toulouse - Salle Henri-Martin - Buste de Pierre de Fermat.jpg
Number of children: 5

Show 6 more facts

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
Stack Exchange tag: hsm.stackexchange.com/tags/fermat

Sources (10)

via Wikidata · CC0

~11 min read

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.