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Pierre de Fermat (French: [pjɛʁ də fɛʁma]; [a] 17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a French mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality.
The problem arose again around 1654 when Chevalier de Méré posed it to Blaise Pascal. Pascal discussed the problem in his ongoing correspondence with Pierre de Fermat. Through this discussion, Pascal and Fermat not only provided a convincing, self-consistent solution to this problem, but also developed concepts that are still fundamental to ...
Fermat's factorization method, named after Pierre de Fermat, is based on the representation of an odd integer as the difference of two squares: N = a 2 − b 2 . {\displaystyle N=a^{2}-b^{2}.} That difference is algebraically factorable as ( a + b ) ( a − b ) {\displaystyle (a+b)(a-b)} ; if neither factor equals one, it is a proper ...
Adequality is a technique developed by Pierre de Fermat in his treatise Methodus ad disquirendam maximam et minimam [1] (a Latin treatise circulated in France c. 1636 ) to calculate maxima and minima of functions, tangents to curves, area, center of mass, least action, and other problems in calculus.
If 2 k + 1 is prime and k > 0, then k itself must be a power of 2, [1] so 2 k + 1 is a Fermat number; such primes are called Fermat primes. As of 2023 [update] , the only known Fermat primes are F 0 = 3 , F 1 = 5 , F 2 = 17 , F 3 = 257 , and F 4 = 65537 (sequence A019434 in the OEIS ).
De Witte's treatment is more original than that description might suggest, although limited to two dimensions; it uses calculus of variations to show that Huygens' construction and Fermat's principle lead to the same differential equation for the ray path, and that in the case of Fermat's principle, the converse holds. De Witte also noted that ...
Pierre de Fermat also pioneered the development of analytic geometry. Although not published in his lifetime, a manuscript form of Ad locos planos et solidos isagoge (Introduction to Plane and Solid Loci) was circulating in Paris in 1637, just prior to the publication of Descartes' Discourse.
The date which historians cite as the beginning of the development of modern probability theory is 1654, when two of the most well-known mathematicians of the time, Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, began a correspondence discussing the subject.