Blaze Mollhagen

11-22-02

Pierre de Fermat

Most people do not know who Pierre de Fermat is, or recognize the significance of his achievements. Fermat’s work helped found the world of calculus as it is a common belief that Isaac Newton revealed that his ideas of differential calculus came from Fermat’s method of drawing tangents. Along with helping to build the basics of calculus, Fermat came up with several theories and, most likely, could have come up with more if he would have wanted to work on their proofs.

Fermat was an ironic man. He was born in southwestern France in 1601. His father was a wealthy leather merchant, and because of this, Fermat was able to get an education from a local monastery. Afterwards, he attended the University of Toulouse and studied law. Ironically, Fermat did not study mathematics in college, but did much of his work in his free time. He had a lot of free time because he became a judge and it was looked down upon for a man in his position to be social in the community.

In this free time, Fermat was devoted to mathematics and was quite gifted in this region. Fermat would come up with a proof and then let others figure out the proof, probably because he found it fun to stump other "geniuses". In doing so, Fermat came up with many ideas, and eight theorems. His most infamous theorem was Fermat’s Last Theorem, because it would prove be his last. The theorem states that x^n + y^n = z^n has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y, and z when n is greater than 2. Fermat wrote about his theorem saying, "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain." 300 years later, the British mathematician, Andrew Wiles, finally proved this theorem.

Many of his ideas had to do with the probability of numbers, which is the mathematics of risk, gambling, and change. These ideas, with the help of Blaise Pascal, helped define how he changed the world, because everyone from insurance companies to the stock market uses them. The number theory is the purest form of mathematics, concerned with the study of whole numbers, the relationships between them, and the patterns they form. For example, Fermat showed that 26 is the only number trapped between a square and a cube because 5^2 = 5x5 = 25 and 3^3 = 3x3x3 = 27. Fermat was also able to prove that no other numbers from zero to infinity have this characteristic. He even came up with a puzzle that has been called Fermat’s Enigma.

When Fermat pasted away in 1665, his oldest son finally polished his ideas. Many other ideas were found after his death, and many mathematicians across Europe studied Fermat’s observations and attempted to rediscover the proofs behind the theorems. Over the course of the next century, each theorem was proved (except for Fermat’s Last Theory).

In conclusion, Pierre de Fermat was an extremely important man in starting the inevitable field of calculus. His theorems and ideas helped people like Newton in his time, and are still used today.