What is Pierre de Fermat?
[[File:Pierre de Fermat.jpg|thumb|150px|Pierre de Fermat]] '''Pierre de Fermat''' (17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a [[French people|French]] [[lawyer]] at the ''Parlement'' of [[Toulouse]], southern [[France]], and a [[mathematician]]. Many people see him as the father of modern [[calculus]]. His method of finding the biggest and smallest [[ordinate]]s of [[curve]]d [[line]]s also makes him a contributor to [[differential calculus]], which was not known at that time. His studies in the [[number theory|theory of numbers]] give him the rank of the founder of the modern theory. He also made notable contributions to [[analytic geometry]], [[probability]] and [[optics]]. He is also famous for making a simple mathematical statement (known as [[Fermat's last theorem|Fermat's Last Theorem]]) that he said he could prove, but he never wrote down his proof. Mathematicians tried to prove it for hundreds of years before finally managing it. Fermat probably did not really have a proof for this theorem, and only thought he did. He proposed his [[refraction|principle on light]] which states that light selects the path which takes least time to travel.This principle was famous as Fermat principle. {{Commons|Pierre de Fermat}} {{bio-stub}} {{authority control}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Fermat, Pierre de}} [[Category:1601 births]] [[Category:1665 deaths]] [[Category:French number theorists]]