Whose Birthday Is It? August 17, 2016

Pierre de Fermant (1601)

A founder of modern probability theory and number theory, Fermat was a French jurist and amateur mathematician. A contemporary of Descartes, he independently discovered the basic principles of analytic geometry. Yet he is best remembered for the assertion now known as Fermat’s Last Theorem, which he scribbled in the margin of a book along with a note stating that he could have shown it to be true but lacked the room in which to write the proof. More…