In which area did this French engineer and physicist, whose name became synonymous to one of a series of concentric prolate ellipsoidal regions of space between and around a transmitting antenna and a receiving antenna system, contribute significantly?
Augustin-Jean Fresnel Augustin-Jean Fresnel ( ; ] ; 10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French engineer and physicist who contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behaviour of light both theoretically and experimentally.
Pierre de Fermat Pierre de Fermat (] ; (Between 31 October and 6 December 1607 – 12 January 1665) was a French lawyer at the "Parlement" of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to infinitesimal calculus, including his technique of adequality. 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 differential calculus, then unknown, and his research into number theory. He made notable contributions to analytic geometry, probability, and optics. He is best known for his Fermat's principle for light propagation and his Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, which he described in a note at the margin of a copy of Diophantus' "Arithmetica".