Pierre de Fermat, the famous French Renaissance mathematician who gave us Fermat’s Last Theorem, left no mathematical records so far as the English-speaking world is concerned. This is because he wrote in Latin. Here for the first time are two of his early works restoring the lost geometry treatise of Apollonius of Perga as well …
Tag Archives: Books
Pierre Fermat Illustration
Here’s a cover for a translated book of renaissance French mathematics by Jim Nicholson. The subject is Pierre Fermat. He invented calculus, statistics, analytical geometry and corrected Galileo about the orbits of bodies, and he has Fermat’s principle in optics named after him. Needless to say, every time someone challenged him about proofs and such, he came through. …