Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Number theory

His Résolution des équations numériques, published in 1798, was also the fruit of his lectures at École Polytechnique. There he gives the method of approximating the real roots of an equation by means of continued fractions, and enunciates several other theorems. In a note at the end, he shows how Fermat's little theorem, that is

where p is a prime and a is prime to p, may be applied to give the complete algebraic solution of any binomial equation. He also here explains how the equation whose roots are the squares of the differences of the roots of the original equation may be used so as to give considerable information as to the position and nature of those roots.
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