“It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things, in order to be able to deduce from them general rules, which might be applicable elsewhere.” ScienceIntelligenceRulesOverviewApplicationsDeductionFermatPierre De Fermat Author:René Descartes
“Foreshadowings of the principles and even of the language of [the infinitesimal] calculus can be found in the writings of Napier, Kepler, Cavalieri, Fermat, Wallis, and Barrow. It was Newton's good luck to come at a time when everything was ripe for the discovery, and his ability enabled him to construct almost at once a complete calculus.” ScienceHistoryDiscoveryMathematicsNewtonCalculusScientistsKeplerIsaac NewtonJohannes KeplerFermatInfinitesimalPierre De FermatBarrowCavalieriNapierWallis Book:A Short Account of the History of Mathematics Source: A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
“I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, for a multitude of such theorems can easily be set up, which one could neither prove nor disprove. But I have been stimulated by it to bring our again several old ideas for a great extension of the theory of numbers. Of course, this theory belongs to the things where one cannot predict to what extent one will succeed in reaching obscurely hovering distant goals. A happy star must also rule, and my situation and so manifold distracting affairs of course do not permit me to pursue such meditations as in the happy years 1796-1798 when I created the principal topics of my Disquisitiones arithmeticae. But I am convinced that if good fortune should do more than I expect, and make me successful in some advances in that theory, even the Fermat theorem will appear in it only as one of the least interesting corollaries. {In reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. The hope Gauss expressed for his success was never realised.}” ScienceTheoryMathematicsMathGoalsFermatPierre De FermatFermat S TheoremHeinrich Wilhelm Matthias OlbersOlbers Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
“I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind. (Recalling the degree of focus and determination that eventually yielded the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.)” ScienceMathematicsSolveMathFermat S Last TheoremFermatPierre De FermatTheorem Author:Andrew John Wiles