Fermat, Pierre de (fèrmä´), 1601-65,
French mathematician and magistrate. Although his work in
mathematics was done for recreation, he was a founder of modern NUMBER THEORY and
PROBABILITY theory. Many developments in number theory resulted from unsuccessful attempts
to prove Fermat's Last Theorem, a conjecture that states that the equation x to the nth power plus y
to the nth power equals z to the nth power, where x, y, and z are nonzero integers, has no solutions
for n when n is an integer greater than 2. In 1993 British mathematician Andrew Wiles described an
apparent proof of the conjecture.
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