Pierre de Fermat - 17Aug2011

Pierre de Fermat (French pronunciation: [pjɛːʁ dəfɛʁˈma]; 17 August 1601 or 1607/8 – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and an amateur mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of the then unknown differential calculus, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for Fermat's Last Theorem, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica.

皮埃爾·德·費馬(Pierre de Fermat,1601年8月17日-1665年1月12日,法語發音[pjɛːʀ də fɛʀma]),法國律師和業餘數學家。他在數學上的成就不比職業數學家差,他似乎對數論最有興趣,亦對現代微積分的建立有所貢獻。

費馬的父親是頗富有的皮革商人。費馬生於塔恩-加龍省的博蒙—德洛馬涅(Beaumont-de-Lomagne),出生的房子現在成了費馬博物館。1620年代中期,他進入土魯斯大學之後,搬到波爾多生活,在那裏開始第一個正式的數學研究,並認識數學家Jean Beaugrand。他們之間有不少數學交流,這在費馬搬到土魯斯後仍未改變。此後他又陸續認識了皮埃爾·德·卡克維、馬蘭·梅森和勒奈·笛卡爾等數學家,並有不少書信交流,費馬的不少數學成果都在這些書信中誕生。

他的名言是:「我發現了一個美妙的證明,但由於空白太小而沒有寫下來。」

1665年他逝於卡斯特。費馬不常正式發表他的研究,死後其子才將之整理成書,叫做Varia Opera。

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