He was well educated both at a Franciscan monastery and the University of Toulouse, although there is no indication that he was particularly attracted to mathematics during this period.
Due in large part to familial influence, Fermat eventually became a lawyer and later entered the civil service. Upon entering the civil service, he served the local parliament as a lawyer, then as a councillor, acting mainly as a liaison between the local municipality and the king. Thus, it appears that politics was his profession. Although Fermat succeeded well in his professional life, his true love and devotion increasingly turned toward the study of numbers.
Fermat's fascination with numbers was rooted in the writings of the ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher Diophantus (fl. A.D. 250), author of the Arithmetica. The Arithmetica originally was comprised of 13 books, though only six are known to have survived the Dark Ages. These books comprised a collection of mathematical problems for which only whole number solutions are possible. As Diophantus was the author of these mathematical problems, they now are known, not surprisingly, as Diophantine problems. Pythagoras's famous theorem is an example.
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