• DOI:10.1007/s10699-019-09642-3
Corpus ID: 209747176

Historical and Foundational Details on the Method of Infinite Descent: Every Prime Number of the Form 4n + 1 is the Sum of Two Squares

@article{Bussotti2020HistoricalAF,
  title={Historical and Foundational Details on the Method of Infinite Descent: Every Prime Number of the Form 4n + 1 is the Sum of Two Squares},
  author={P. Bussotti and R. Pisano},
  journal={Foundations of Science},
  year={2020},
  pages={1-32}
}

P. Bussotti, R. Pisano

Published 2020

Mathematics

Foundations of Science

Pierre de Fermat (1601/7–1665) is known as the inventor of modern number theory. He invented–improved many methods useful in this discipline. Fermat often claimed to have proved his most difficult theorems thanks to a method of his own invention: the infinite descent (Fermat 1891–1922, II, pp. 431–436). He wrote of numerous applications of this procedure. Unfortunately, he left only one almost complete demonstration and an outline of another demonstration. The outline concerns the theorem that… CONTINUE READING

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