Gauss: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57919.

html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss

Fermat: http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/FermatsLittleTheorem.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Fermat

Carl Friedrich Gauss was born on the 30th of April, 1777 in Braunschweig in the duchy
of Braunschweig-Wolfenbü ttel, now part of Lower Saxony, Germany, as the son of poor
working-class parents. His mother was illiterate and unable to record the date of his
birth, but remembered that it was 40 days after Easter. Later, he solved the puzzle of
how to find Easter day and discovered his birthday.

Gauss was a child prodigy and he made his first ground-breaking mathematical
discoveries while still a teenager. Gauss's intellectual abilities attracted the attention of
the Duke of Braunschweig,[2] who sent him to the Collegium Carolinum (now Technische
Universitä t Braunschweig), which he attended from 1792 to 1795, and to the University
of Gö ttingen from 1795 to 1798. While in university, Gauss independently rediscovered
several important theorems.

Gauss died in Gö ttingen, Hannover (now part of Lower Saxony, Germany) in 1855 and
is interred in the cemetery Albanifriedhof there.

When Gauss was in primary school, his teacher got mad at the class and punish them by telling them to sit
down and add the numbers from 1 to 100. This was meant to be a long and tedious task, but Gauss gave
him the correct answer shortly after.

After solving the puzzle, he created the theorem:

1+…+n = (n)*(n+1)
2

Example: Evaluate 1+2+…+500.

Using the formula,

(500)*(500+1) ___ (500)x(501) ___ ___

2 ___ 2 ___ ___

Fermat:

Fermat was born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, Tarn-et-Garonne, France; the late 15th

century mansion where Fermat was born is now a museum. He was of Basque origin.
Fermat's father was a wealthy leather merchant and second consul of Beaumont-de-
Lomagne. Pierre had a brother and two sisters and was almost certainly brought up in
the town of his birth. There is little evidence concerning his school education, but it may
have been at the local Franciscan monastery
Buste in the Salle des Illustres in Capitole de Toulouse

He attended the University of Toulouse before moving to Bordeaux in the second half of
the 1620s. In Bordeaux he began his first serious mathematical researches and in 1629
he gave a copy of his restoration of Apollonius's De Locis Planis to one of the
mathematicians there. Certainly in Bordeaux he was in contact with Beaugrand and
during this time he produced important work on maxima and minima which he gave to
É tienne d'Espagnet who clearly shared mathematical interests with Fermat. There he
became much influenced by the work of François Viète.

From Bordeaux, Fermat went to Orléans where he studied law at the University. He
received a degree in civil law before, in 1631, receiving the title of councillor at the High
Court of Judicature in Toulouse, which he held for the rest of his life. Due to the office he
now held he became entitled to change his name from Pierre Fermat to Pierre de
Fermat. Fluent in Latin, Basque[citation needed], classical Greek, Italian, and Spanish, Fermat
was praised for his written verse in several languages, and his advice was eagerly
sought regarding the emendation of Greek texts.

He communicated most of his work in letters to friends, often with little or no proof of
his theorems. This allowed him to preserve his status as an "amateur" while gaining the
recognition he desired. This naturally led to priority disputes with fellow
contemporaries such as Descartes and Wallis. He developed a close relationship with
Blaise Pascal.{[2]

Anders Hald writes that, "The basis of Fermat's mathematics was the classical Greek
treatises combined with Vieta's new algebraic methods."[3]

Let p be a prime which does not divide the integer a, then ap-1 = 1 (mod p).

It is so easy to calculate ap-1 that most elementary primality tests are built using a version of
Fermat's Little Theorem rather than Wilson's Theorem.

As usual Fermat did not provide a proof (this time saying "I would send you the
demonstration, if I did not fear its being too long" [Burton80, p79]). Euler first
published a proof in 1736, but Leibniz left virtually the same proof in an unpublished
manuscript from sometime before 1683.

Proof.

Start by listing the first p-1 positive multiples of a:

a, 2a, 3a, ... (p -1)a

Suppose that ra and sa are the same modulo p, then we have r = s (mod p), so the p-1
multiples of a above are distinct and nonzero; that is, they must be congruent to 1, 2,
3, ..., p-1 in some order. Multiply all these congruences together and we find

a.2a.3a.....(p-1)a = 1.2.3.....(p-1) (mod p)

 or better, a(p-1)(p-1)! = (p-1)! (mod p). Divide both side by (p-1)! to complete the proof.

Sometimes Fermat's Little Theorem is presented in the following form:

Corollary.

Let p be a prime and a any integer, then ap = a (mod p).

Proof.

The result is trival (both sides are zero) if p divides a. If p does not divide a, then we
need only multiply the congruence in Fermat's Little Theorem by a to complete the
proof.