Pierre de Fermat and His 'Most Difficult Math Problem' Celebrated by Google Doodle

Wednesday, Google Doogle celebrates Pierre de Fermat's 410th birthday, with his Last Theorem represented by:

xⁿ + yⁿ ≠ zⁿ

The formula is written on a blackboard on the Google main page, over a barely readable "Google" overwritten by this historical theorem by the French mathematician and lawyer.

If you move your mouse onto the Doodle, the pop-up reads "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, which this doodle is too small to contain."

As a French lawyer and amateur mathematician, Fermat is best known for his Last Theorem, which he formulated in 1637, when he was 36.

The theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than two.

The theorem was first discovered by his son in the margin on Fermat's copy of an edition of Diophantus, and included the very statement on the Doodle pop-up.

Fermat's Last Theorem is among the most famous theorems in the history of mathematics, and received the title of "most difficult math problem" in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The theorem did not receive a successful proof until 1995, when British mathematician Andrew Wiles published a proof built upon many other mathematicians who had put enormous efforts.

While the theorem remains Fermat's most famous work, he has contributed to mathematics in many more ways.

His early ideas on calculus inspired Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, and he was also the inventor of analytic geometry. His other works include light refraction and optics, research of the weight of the earth, and impacting the theory of probability through correspondence with Pascal.