Pierre de Fermat Quotes
It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Fermat, Pierre de. Marginal note in Arithmetica, by Diophantus of Alexandria. Diophanti Alexandrini Arithmeticorum, edited by Samuel de Fermat, Bernard Bosc, 1670, p. 61.
Mathematical analysis is a much sounder method for determining truth than argument but it only is applicable where the real world fits the mathematical structures that we have which unfortunately is not enough to answer most of the political questions facing us.
Pierre de Fermat was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. In particular, he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is analogous to that of differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for his Fermat's principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica.
