Top

Pierre De Fermat

August 17, 2011 by · Comments Off on Pierre De Fermat 

Pierre De FermatPierre De Fermat, Joyeux anniversaire, Pierre de Fermat! Today is the 410th birthday of the French mathematician.

Fermat is best known as the originator or the Fermat’s Last Theorem, which is a deceptively simple formula known scribbled in the margins of a book, where he claimed the test was too large to fit. Theorem fame grew because – despite the countless efforts of mathematicians – four centuries would pass before the publication of a successful test in 1995 by Sir Andrew Wiles, a professor of the Royal Society Research Oxford.

Fermat’s birthday is marked today with a Google Doodle, and in an ironic reference to the initial margin mathematical note, if you mouse over the text is the alt doodle “I discovered a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, this doodle is too small to contain. ”

According to the theorem, for any integer n greater than two, there is positive integers a, b, c, and can satisfy the equation:

An + bn = cn

You may recognize from their school days the simple case n = 2 as the Pythagorean theorem.

Perhaps Fermat would rather be remembered for more than a little comment in the margin of a book? Here are some things you may not know about Pierre de Fermat.

Pierre de Fermat Pierre de Fermat is not. He trained as a lawyer at the University of Orleans, and became the counselor of the Supreme Judicial Court in Toulouse. Here he became the right to change its name from Pierre Fermat to Pierre de Fermat.

Fermat has its own number. Fermat numbers have been found to be good at generating random number sequences that are ideal for encryption of data in computers, keeping all your banking and personal security files.

Also has a small Fermat theorem. Fermat’s Little Theorem is used in something called Fermat primality test. The test tells whether an integer is a prime number likely. As a prime number is a strictly divisible only by one and itself, a likely first have similar properties, but may be easier to generate. These numbers are very important in cryptography and Internet security.

Fermat is one of the founders of the theory of probability. Through its close relationship with Blaise Pascal, mathematician and philosopher studied how it behaves in gambling with dice. An exchange of letters between the two mathematicians have developed a general formulation of the theory of probability – the work that still provides the basic principles of how to calculate the odds sports today horse racing to football.

A measure of the influence of Fermat that many of its results are used today in computer science and cryptography. However, it is well known for failing to give rigorous mathematical proofs to his work. For example, the proof of Fermat’s Little Theorem was first given not by Fermat, Gottfried Leibniz but.

This reluctance has puzzled and frustrated mathematicians for centuries. On the positive side, there are still some of Fermat’s work has not yet been demonstrated. So, given the inclination, you can try your hand at solving them.

Bottom