Pierre fermat was born in beaumontdelomagne, in southern france in late 1607 or early 1608. He was actually a lawyer, but worked on math as a hobby. His eldest son, clementsamuel, also became a lawyer and inherited his office upon his death. There is some dispute about the date of pierre s birth as given above, since it is possible that he had an elder brother who had also been given the name pierre but who died young. He wrote it in the margin of the book diophantus arithmetica.
Together with rene descartes, fermat was one of the two leading mathematicians of the first half of the 17th century. Pierre was a lawyer by profession, but historians give him the credit of a genius mathematician. He helped found probability theory and analytic geometry, and. Many people see him as the father of modern calculus. This lesson will explore some of these contributions and accomplishments. Pierre had a brother and two sisters and was almost certainly brought up in the town of. Fermats vater dominique fermat war ein erfolgreicher gro. Many people see him as the father of modern calculus his method of finding the biggest and smallest ordinates of curved lines also makes him a contributor to differential calculus, which was not known at that time his studies in the. Despite these impressive accomplishments, however, it is as a mathematician that he is best remembered. Together with rene descartes, fermat was one of the two leading.
Stimulated and inspired by the arithmetica of the hellenistic mathematician diophantus, he went on to discover several new patterns in numbers which had defeated mathematicians for centuries. While descartes was laying the foundations of analytical geometry, the same subject was occupying the attention of another and not less distinguished frenchman. He was a competent classical scholar and philologist, was fluent in five languages, and composed poetry. He was the pioneer of infinitesimal calculus and created fermat s last theorem and fermat s principle for light propagation childhood and early life.