Quotes About Fermat

The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem underscores how stable mathematics is through the centuries - how mathematics is one of humanity's long continuous conversations with itself.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

Fermat said he had a proof.

when not sentencing priests to be burnt at the stake, Fermat dedicated himself to his hobby.

The main interest of Fermat, who shares the credit for inventing calculus with Newton and analytic geometry with Descartes, was number theory —"the higher arithmetic.

Fermat's last theorem,

When people asked hilbert why he didn't prove Fermat's Last Theorem and win the Wolfskehl Prize, he said, "Why should I kill the goose that lays the golden egg?

The place of the study of communication in the history of science is neither trivial, fortuitous, nor new. Even before Newton such problems were current in physics, especially in the work of Fermat, Huygens, and Leibnitz, each of whom shared an interest in physics whose focus was not mechanics but optics, the communication of visual images.