Mathematician:Pierre de Fermat

French lawyer, also an amateur mathematician famous for lots of things. Especially:
 * Fermat's Little Theorem
 * Claimed to have found a proof for what became known as Fermat's Last Theorem, but it has since been doubted that this is in fact the case (he may have been mistaken).

Although he claimed to have found proofs of many theorems, few of these have survived. It has been suggested, with some justification, that it was Fermat, not Descartes, who was the true inventor of analytic geometry.

Nationality
French

History

 * Born: 17 August 1601 or 1607/8 (exact date unknown), Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France
 * Died: 12 January 1665, Castres, France

Theorems and Definitions

 * Fermat's Little Theorem (otherwise known as Fermat's Theorem)
 * Fermat Prime - conjectured (incorrectly) that all integers of the form $2^{\left({2^n}\right)} + 1$ are prime.
 * Fermat's Christmas Theorem (also known as Fermat's Two Squares Theorem)
 * Fermat's Principle


 * Claimed to have found a proof for what became known as Fermat's Last Theorem, but it has since been doubted that this is in fact the case (he may have been mistaken).


 * Fermat Point (also known as a Torricelli Point)

Books and Papers

 * 1637: Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci
 * 1659: New Account of Discoveries in the Science of Numbers

Also see

 * : Chapter $\text{IV}$
 * : $\S 6$
 * : Chapter $\text {A}.13$