ProofWiki:Mathematicians/Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac

Also known as Claude (Gaspar) Bachet.

First to discuss the solution of indeterminate equations by means of continued fractions.

First member to hold Seat 13 of the Académie Française.

Nationality

French.

History

• Born: 9 October 1581 in Bourg-en-Bresse, Savoy (now France)
• Died: 26 February 1638 in Bourg-en-Bresse

Theorems and Definitions

Believed to have provided a proof of what is now known as Bézout's Identity.

Books and Papers

• 1612: Problèmes plaisans et delectables qui se font par les nombres, a collection of arithmetical tricks and questions
• 1621: Les éléments arithmétiques, a translation from Greek to Latin of the Arithmetic of Diophantus. It was in the margin of this edition that Fermat stated his famous "last" theorem
• 1624: Problèmes plaisans (2nd edition)

Also see

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive