History[edit]
Albert Girard was the first to make the observation, characterizing the positive integers (not necessarily primes) that are expressible as the sum of two squares of positive integers; this was published in 1625.[2][3] The statement that every prime p of the form 4n+1 is the sum of two squares is sometimes called Girard's theorem.[4] For his part, Fermat wrote an elaborate version of the statement (in which he also gave the number of possible expressions of the powers of p as a sum of two squares) in a letter to Marin Mersenne dated December 25, 1640: for this reason this version of the theorem is sometimes called Fermat's Christmas theorem.
Gaussian primes[edit]
Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares is strongly related with the theory of Gaussian primes.
A Gaussian integer is a complex number such that a and b are integers. The norm of a Gaussian integer is an integer equal to the square of the absolute value of the Gaussian integer. The norm of a product of Gaussian integers is the product of their norms. This is the Diophantus identity, which results immediately from the similar property of the absolute value.
Gaussian integers form a principal ideal domain. This implies that Gaussian primes can be defined similarly as primes numbers, that is as those Gaussian integers that are not the product of two non-units (here the units are 1, −1, i and −i).
The multiplicative property of the norm implies that a prime number p is either a Gaussian prime or the norm of a Gaussian prime. Fermat's theorem asserts that the first case occurs when and that the second case occurs when and The last case is not considered in Fermat's statement, but is trivial, as
