While quite a number of people shy away from things that are of a mathematical nature, there is no denying the fact that whatever technologies and innovations we have now are due in part to mathematical concepts.
It is therefore but fitting that Google honor one of history’s greatest mathematicians through a Google doodle that transformed the Google homepage logo into a hugely appropriate mathematical formula.
Pierre de Fermat was born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France, on August 16, 1601. He studied at the University of Toulouse, and eventually relocated to Bordeaux in the late 1620s. It was there that he began serious research in the field of mathematics, notably producing significant work on the concept of maxima and minima. He then went on to earn a law degree from the University of Law at Orléans.
The Notable Names Database (NNDB) shared: “He died in the belief that he had found a relation which every prime number must satisfy, namely 2^(2n) + I = a prime. This was afterwards disproved by Leonhard Euler for the case when n = 5.”
Fermat made contributions to the following fields: differential calculus, number theory, analytic geometry, probability, and optics.
Fermat eventually became a lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, in France. Stetson University shared: “By 1631, Fermat was a lawyer and government official in Toulouse and because of the office he now held he became entitled to change his name from Pierre Fermat to Pierre de Fermat.”
