Monday 11 January 2021

12 January: Pierre de Fermat

This date in history saw the death, in 1665, of mathematician Pierre de Fermat. Here are 10 facts about him:

  1. He was born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France. His father, Dominique Fermat, was a wealthy merchant dealing in agricultural products such as Wheat, Wine, cattle, and animal hides. His mother’s name was Claire de Long. She came from an aristocratic family. She died when Pierre was seven.
  2. His date of birth isn’t known, but it’s though to have been late 1607 or early 1608. August 1601 is sometimes quoted, but this was another Pierre de Fermat – a half-brother who died in infancy.
  3. There are no records about his education until he went to the University of Orléans at the age of around 15 to study civil law and graduated three years later. Soon after he moved to Bordeaux where he became an attorney in the high court.
  4. Although he contributed much to the field of mathematics, he worked as a lawyer and maths was just his hobby. In his 20s, he became a councillor at the Parlement de Toulouse, one of the High Courts in France, which made him a member of the nobility and gave him the right to call himself Pierre de Fermat rather than simply Pierre Fermat. He held this office for the rest of his life.
  5. He married his wife’s fourth cousin, Louise de Long, in 1631. He was in his 20s at the time, she was 15.
  6. He wasn’t just talented at maths, either. He was fluent in six languages (French, Latin, Occitan, classical Greek, Italian and Spanish). He wrote poetry, too, in several different languages.
  7. He became friends with a number of influential mathematicians of his time and corresponded with them, but never published any of his own work. Hence his contributions to the field come from his letters and notes he scribbled in the margins of his books. The latter were only discovered after he died.
  8. His famous last theorem wasn’t the last one he came up with, but is rather known as his last theorem because it remained unproven when all his others had been proved. He wrote it in 1637 and it says the equation an + bn = cn cannot be true for any three numbers if the value of n is more than 2. It is sometimes referred to as Fermat's conjecture, and was found by his son five years after he died, scribbled in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica (a book by a Greek mathematician called Diophantus, published around 250AD). He famously added that he had proved it, but there wasn’t room in the margin of the book to write down the proof.
  9. In Fermat’s time, people didn’t have much use for pure mathematics. Mathematicians were often quite secretive about their work, so there were often disputes about who was the first to come up with, or prove, a theory. Probability theory, however, did have its uses. Blaise Pascal wrote to Fermat in 1654 about a problem some professional gamblers had presented him with. If a game of Dice was interrupted and couldn’t be completed, how should they share out the stake Money if, say, someone had bet on throwing a six within eight throws of a die, but had only managed three throws (without throwing a six). Fermat solved this using maths; Fermat and Pascal are today recognised as the co-founders of probability theory.
  10. Pierre de Fermat died aged 57 or 58, on January 12, 1665 in Castres, France. He’d been working at the local court three days before he died, and it’s not known what caused his death.


New Year New Reading Challenge?

I can help. Here are links to books which meet potential criteria:

A title with three words

A title with six words

A book with a number in the title

A book with a colour in the title

Short story collections/A book with a green cover

A book published in the last year/during lockdown

A book you can finish in a day/A book under 200 pages

A book featuring characters from a deck of cards

A Book set during Christmas

A book with a place in the title

A Debut novel


A book with a plant or flower on the cover/A book about siblings

A book with a female villain or criminal

Includes space travel

Features Royalty

Books featuring skiing or snowboarding

A book with the Olympic games in it

A book with a bird in the title

A book featuring a secret society

A book featuring time travel/alternative dimensions
Raiders Trilogy:

Books featuring superheroes

Books featuring ghosts

From an Indie Publisher/Self published/An author you've not read before/A female author/A genre you wouldn't normally read/A book outside your comfort zone/A book by an author with your initials and your initials are JH
All of them!

More details can be found here
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