Fermat's Little Theorem offers an elegant probabilistic shortcut for detecting prime numbers, but a strange class of ...

Fermat numbers have what mathematicians sometimes describe as a “beautiful mathematical form,” involving powers of 2. They were of interest 400 years ago and are now the subject of a wide-ranging ...

Joyeux anniversaire, Pierre de Fermat! Today is the French mathematician's 410th birthday. Fermat is best known as the originator or Fermat's Last Theorem, which consists of a deceptively ...

Sometimes work in one discipline of pure mathematics has a completely unexpected payoff in another. Some of the famous mathematician Pierre de Fermat’s (1601–1665) work in number theory bears this out ...