In honor of mathematician Pierre de Fermat’s 410th birthday, Google is celebrating with a special Doodle. On the homepage for the search engine, its official logo is replaced by a blackboard with algebraic symbols on it, with the world “Google” faintly visible, as though partially erased. The symbols on the blackboard read: xn + yn ? zn. When users hover their mouses over the Doodle, the pop-up text reads “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, which this doodle is too small to contain.”

When users click on the Doodle, information about Fermat is loaded. The mathematician, who was also a lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, was born on August 17, 1601 in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France. Fermat, who died on January 12, 1665 at the age of 63 in Castres, France, was known for his breakthroughs in several fields of calculus, probability, geometry and number theory.

However, Fermat is best known for one of the greatest mathematical mysteries of all time. He wrote a brief note in the margin of an arithmetic book, suggesting that when some square numbers-the product of a number multiplied by itself-are added to certain other squares, they create a third square. However, mathematicians have since argued whether there’s any whole number n for which an + bn + cn. Many believe there’s not, but one one could prove it mathematically.

Click Here for more Google Doodles from our favorite search engine Google.com.

Written by: Karen Benardello

Pierre de Fermat Google Doodle
Pierre de Fermat Google Doodle
Pierre de Fermat
Pierre de Fermat

By Karen Benardello

As a graduate of LIU Post with a B.F.A in Journalism, Print and Electronic, Karen Benardello serves as ShockYa's Senior Movies & Television Editor. Her duties include interviewing filmmakers and musicians, and scribing movie, television and music reviews and news articles. As a New York City-area based journalist, she's a member of the guilds, New York Film Critics Online and the Women Film Critics Circle.

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