
48 ◾ Computing
published. e best-known Latin translation of Arithmetica was made by
the French mathematician Claude-Gospar Bachet de Meziriac (1581–1638)
in 1621. at translation was widely available in Western Europe.
Pierre de Fermat, a French lawyer and mathematician, owned a copy of
the 1621 edition of the Latin translation of Arithmetica. Around 1637 he
wrote a memo, so called Fermat’s last theorem, in the margin of his copy
as follows:
If an integer n is greater than 2, then x
n
+ y
n
= z
n
has no solutions
in non-zero integers x, y, and z. I have a truly marvelous proof of
the proposition, but this margin is too narrow to contain t