Isosceles triangle the hypotenuse to the right-angled vertex) divides the right triangle into two isosceles triangles. This is because the midpoint of the hypotenuse is the center of the circumcircle of the right triangle, and each of the two triangles created by the partition has two equal radii as two of its sides. Similarly, an acute triangle can be partitioned into three isosceles triangles by segments from its circumcenter, but this method does not work for obtuse triangles, because the circumcenter lies outside the triangle. Generalizing the partition of an acute triangle, any cyclic polygon that contains the center of its circumscribed
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