Pierre de Fermat

Pierre de Fermat (17 August 1601 – 12 January 1665) was a 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 ordinates of curved lines also makes him a contributor to differential calculus, which was not known at that time. His studies in the 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) 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 principle on light which states that light selects the path which takes least time to travel.This principle was famous as Fermat principle.

Pierre De Fermat Media

Pierre de Fermat, 17th century painting by Rolland Lefebvre [fr]
The 1670 edition of Diophantus's Arithmetica includes Fermat's commentary, referred to as his "Last Theorem" (Observatio Domini Petri de Fermat), posthumously published by his son
Place of burial of Pierre de Fermat in Place Jean Jaurés, Castres. Translation of the plaque: in this place was buried on January 13, 1665, Pierre de Fermat, councillor at the Chambre de l'Édit (a court established by the Edict of Nantes) and mathematician of great renown, celebrated for his theorem, $a' n + b' n \neq c' n$ for $n > 2$ .
Monument to Fermat in Beaumont-de-Lomagne in Tarn-et-Garonne, southern France
Bust in the Salle Henri-Martin in the Capitole de Toulouse
Holographic will handwritten by Fermat on 4 March 1660, now kept at the Departmental Archives of Haute-Garonne, in Toulouse