Fermat's flash life story
(or Math on Renaissance — part 6 — Fermat)
Some years after Descartes birth, another important Mathematician came to the World: Pierre de Fermat (1601–1665). Probably you might have heard something about Fermat's last theorem (we won't talk about what's Fermat's Last Theorem on this post), but his life story is much more than this.
First of all, Fermat was *not* officially a mathematician — he was a hobbyist only. He was actually a lawyer. Restoring old math and science works made Fermat become really passionate for numbers. This passion went so further that we can say Fermat was the most influent creator of modern Number Theory.
He really enjoyed deducing some (challenging) theorems, such as:
- Maximums and Minimums of a function;
- Areas under a curve;
- Tangent of functions;
And with these three topics, Fermat solidified the basis for differential calculus. Can you determine the only missing point on Fermat' studies? Limits. Unfortunately he wasn't able to connect this missing piece.
Fermat also contributes to Analytics Geometry with studies on general line equation, circle equation and later equations for parabola, hyperbola and ellipsis. This also had a direct impact on Physics: Analytics Geometry stimulated the transformation of physical happenings into mathematical formulas. What a beautiful wedding.
Talking about Physics, one last point that Fermat contributed to: studies on refraction and reflection of light.
There are also episodes on history about Descartes and Fermat arguments. Fermat, a passionate person with any real scientifically role attracted the attention of Mathematical community for his talent. Descartes could not handle this (again, human factors!) and deliberately started to criticise negatively Fermat's works and proofs.
Most of Fermat's work were published by his son, with his annotations. The Fermat's Last Theorem is tricky because… there were not annotations for this. And it took us over 350 years to proove. So young genius, please rembember to write notes on your sentences. ☺
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