nLab Pierre de Fermat

Pierre de Fermat was a 17th-century French mathematician known for:

• adequality? (now a feature of nonstandard analysis),
• infinite descent (a method of proof by induction),
• the least time principle? (a forerunner of the least action principle),
• Fermat's little theorem and Fermat's last theorem concerning rational points of Fermat curve (in number theory, now related to arithmetic algebraic geometry),
• the first rigorous probability calculations,
• etc.

See also Fermat theory

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