Pierre de Fermat Pierre de Fermat was born in the year 1601 in Beaumont-de-Lomages, France. Mr. Fermat's education began in 1631. He was educated at home. Mr. Fermat has been a single man all his life. Pierre de Fermat, like many mathematicians of the early 17th century, found solutions to the four main problems that created a form of mathematics called infinitesimal calculus. Before Sir Isaac Newton was even born, Fermat found a method for finding the tangent to a curve. He tried different ways in mathematics to improve the system. This was his occupation. Mr. Fermat was a good scholar and enjoyed restoring Apollonius' work on the loci plani. Fermat published only a few articles in his lifetime and gave no systematic exposition of his methods. He had a habit of scribbling notes in the margins of books or in letters rather than publishing them. He was modest because he thought that if he published his theorems people would not believe them. He did not appear to have any intention of publishing his articles. It is likely that he revised his notes when the occasion called for it. His published works represent the final form of his research and therefore cannot be dated before 1660. Pierre de Fermat discovered many things during his lifetime. Some things he did include: -If p is a prime and a is a prime for p then ap-1-1 is divisible by p, i.e. ap-1-1=0 (mod p). The proof of this, first given by Euler, was quite well known. A more general theorem is that a0-(n)-1=0 (mod n), where a is prime...