After fermat died, people went over his notebooks and books, and found his copy of arithmetica a book on diophantine. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which. Independently of descartes, fermat discovered the fundamental principle of. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the. Together with rene descartes, fermat was one of the two leading mathematicians of the first half of the 17th century. A boast in the margin of a book is the starting point for a wonderful journey through. Fermats last theorem is a popular science book 1997 by simon singh. What came to be known as fermat s last theorem looked simple. Did fermat really write his last theorem on the margins of a. Pierre fermat was born in beaumontdelomagne, in southern france in late 1607 or early 1608. The last theorem in fact takes its name from the fact of being the last of fermats theorems to be proved, not from the fact of having been the last to be enunciated.
He further claimed that he had discovered a marvelous proof of this fact, but it was too l. In number theory, fermats last theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy. Around 1637, fermat wrote in the margin of a book that the more general. Independently of descartes, fermat discovered the fundamental principle of analytic geometry. Did fermat really write his last theorem on the margins.