2 - Diophantine Arithmetic

Summary

Diophantine equations are polynomial equations for which integer (or sometimes rational) solutions are sought. The oldest examples date from ancient Greek times, and Diophantus in particular solved many such equations. His methods and the questions they raised inspired much of modern number theory, beginning with the work of Fermat and Euler. Euler, and later Gauss, introduced algebraic integers to solve Diophantine equations, implicitly or explicitly using "unique prime factorization" to do so.