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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.
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.
In mathematics, Fermat's theorem (also known as interior extremum theorem) is a theorem which states that at the local extrema of a differentiable function, its derivative is always zero. It belongs to the mathematical field of real analysis and is named after French mathematician Pierre de Fermat .
For illustration, let n be factored into d and e, n = de. The general equation a n + b n = c n. implies that (a d, b d, c d) is a solution for the exponent e (a d) e + (b d) e = (c d) e. Thus, to prove that Fermat's equation has no solutions for n > 2, it would suffice to prove that it has no solutions for at least one prime factor of every n.
Calculus is the mathematical study of continuous change, ... Pierre de Fermat, claiming that he borrowed from Diophantus, introduced the concept of adequality, ...
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 curve was first proposed and studied by René Descartes in 1638. [1] Its claim to fame lies in an incident in the development of calculus.Descartes challenged Pierre de Fermat to find the tangent line to the curve at an arbitrary point since Fermat had recently discovered a method for finding tangent lines.
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 ...