Pierre de Fermat was born on August 17th, 1601. He was of Basque origin, and received his primary education from the local school. He had one brother and two sisters. Fermat studied law at the University Toulouse, and received a degree in civil law. His studies included foreign languages, classical literature, ancient science and mathematics. It was following a move to Bordeaux that he began his first serious mathematical research. Having many interests, by 1631 Fermat was a lawyer and government official in Toulouse, where he lived the rest of his life. He continued to work as a government official, and in 1652 was promoted to the highest level in the criminal court. Fermat died on 12th January 1665.
Fermat claimed he had a solution in the 17th century to the problem that was made in the 3rd century, by the Greek mathematician Diophantus. This theory was named Fermat's last theorem and has baffled the most intelligent mathematicians.
.
Fermat's greatest love was for number theory, a subject that has almost no use. Number theory is the purest form of mathematics, concerned with the study of whole numbers, the relationships between them, and the patterns they form. Arithmetica, written by Diophantus, was devoted to problems related to whole numbers.
The page of Arithmetica which inspired Fermat to create the Last Theorem discussed the Pythgoras' Theorem. This is where he stated, "I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain". It was then basically stated "xn + yn = zn, where x, y, z, and n are nonzero integers, has no solutions for n that are greater than 2. .
Many people have tried and failed to solve Fermat's last theorem. These include many famous mathematicians: Gauss, Galois, Kummer, Euler, Sophie Germain and Fermat himself. We can be almost certain that Fermat, despite what he wrote, did not have a proof. This is because he published an article of 'unsolved' mathematical problems, and among them a version of his last theorem.
