Proofs of Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares

with integer x and y if and only if p is congruent to 1 (mod 4). The statement was announced by Girard in 1625, and again by Fermat in 1640, but neither supplied a proof. The 'only if' clause is easy: a perfect square is congruent to 0 or 1 modulo 4, hence a sum of two squares is congruent to 0, 1, or 2. An odd prime number is congruent to either 1 or 3 modulo 4, and the second possibility has just been ruled out. The first proof that such a representation exists was given by Leonhard Euler in 1747 and was complicated. Since then, many different proofs have been found. Among them, the proof using Minkowski's theorem about convex sets and Don Zagier's short proof based on involutions have appeared. Euler succeeded in proving Fermat's theorem on sums of two squares in 1749, when he was forty-two years old. He communicated this in a letter to Goldbach dated 12 April 1749. The proof relies on infinite descent, and is only briefly sketched in the letter. The full proof consists in five steps and is published in two papers. The first four steps are Propositions 1 to 4 of the first paper and do not correspond exactly to the four steps below. The fifth step below is from the second paper.