Fermat: The Founder of Modern Number Theory

Israel Kleiner ()
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Israel Kleiner: York University, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Chapter Chapter 2 in Excursions in the History of Mathematics, 2012, pp 31-45 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Fermat, though a lawyer by profession and only an “amateur” mathematician, is regarded as the founder of modern number theory. What were some of his major results in that field? What inspired his labors? Why did he not publish his proofs? How did scholars attempt to reconstruct them? Did Fermat have a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem? What were the attitudes of seventeenth-century mathematicians to his number theory? These are among the questions we will address in this chapter.

Keywords: Number Theory; Elliptic Curve; Elliptic Curf; Diophantine Equation; Binary Quadratic Form (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1007/978-0-8176-8268-2_2

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