Little is known about the life of the Greek mathematician Diophantus. However, his work led to one of the greatest mathematical challenges of all time, Fermat's last theorem.

Diophantus was born and lived in Alexandria, now in Egypt, which was at the time a great center of culture and learning in the Greek world. We have no record of the date of his birth or death, but we do have two pieces of evidence regarding when and how long he lived. One is a letter written in the 11th century, that tells that the bishop of Laodicea, Anatolius, dedicated his work on Egyptian computation to Diophantus, who was a good friend; since we know that Anatolius was bishop around 270 a.d., it would make sense that Diophantus was his contemporary.

A bit more sleuthing is required to learn a few details of Diophantus's life, which were left behind...