Time tunnel: "Fermat's Little Theorem"

Exactly 377 years ago, Pierre de Fermat announced in a letter to his fellow mathematician Bernard Frenicle de Bessey that he had created a "Little Fermat's Theorem," capable of verifying whether a number is prime or not.

Despite its great importance, the first proof of the so-called "Little Theorem of Fermat" took almost a hundred years to be published. It was only published in 1736 by the great Leonhard Euler.

Fermat was not at all vain about his discoveries, to the point of never publishing them. He only made references to them in correspondence with friends. Despite having created Analytic Geometry (1629) and made important contributions to Mathematics, he considered the discipline a hobby.

A lawyer and magistrate by profession, he dedicated his leisure time to mathematics. Because of this, he is considered the "Prince of Amateurs." Despite this amateurism, Blaise Pascal considered him the greatest mathematician of his time.

His last theorem was solved 357 years after it was proposed. It was up to the Englishman Andrew Wiles, a professor at Oxford University, to solve one of the most difficult riddles in the history of algebra.