Special right triangle than 256: Isosceles right-angled triangles cannot have sides with integer values, because the ratio of the hypotenuse to either other side is , but cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers. However, infinitely many "almost-isosceles" right triangles do exist. These are right-angled triangles with integral sides for which the lengths of the non-hypotenuse edges differ by one. Such almost-isosceles right-angled triangles can be obtained recursively, "a" is length of hypotenuse, "n" = 1, 2, 3, ... Equivalently, where {"x", "y"} are the solutions to the Pell equation , with the hypotenuse "y" being the odd terms of the
Fermat's right triangle theorem congruum is equivalent to the existence of a Pythagorean triangle with a square area. It is this variant of the problem that Fermat's proof concerns: he shows that there is no such triangle. In considering this problem, Fermat was inspired not by Fibonacci but by an edition of Diophantus published by Claude Gaspard Bachet de Méziriac. This book described various special right triangles whose areas had forms related to squares, but did not consider the case of areas that were themselves square. By rearranging the equations for the two Pythagorean triangles above, and then multiplying them together, one obtains the