It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.

In particular he is recognized for his discovery of an original method of finding the greatest and the smallest ordinates of curved lines which is analogous to that of the differential calculus then unknown and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry probability and optics.