What starts as a simple counting problem with colored beads reveals one of number theory's most elegant results. This is Fermat's Little Theorem, discovered not through abstract algebra, but through ...

Sometimes work in one discipline of pure mathematics has a completely unexpected payoff in another. Some of the famous mathematician Pierre de Fermat’s (1601–1665) work in number theory bears this out ...

Like many math students, I had dreams of mathematical greatness. I thought I was close once. A difficult algebra problem in college kept me working late into the night. After hours of struggle, I felt ...