 The special case of the problem for three points in the plane (that is, "m" = 3 and "n" = 2 in the definition below) is sometimes also known as Fermat's problem; it arises in the construction of minimal Steiner trees, and was originally posed as a problem by Pierre de Fermat and solved by Evangelista Torricelli.Its solution is now known as the Fermat point of the triangle formed by the three sample points.The geometric median may in turn be generalized to the problem of minimizing the sum of "weighted" distances, known as the Weber problem after Alfred Weber's discussion of the problem in his 1909 book on facility location.