Pythagoras

Pythagoras Pythagoras (fl. 530 BCE) must have been one of the world's greatest men, but he wrote nothing, and it is hard to say how much of the doctrine we know as Pythagorean is due to the founder of the society and how much is later development. It is also hard to say how much of what we are told about the life of Pythagoras is trustworthy; for a mass of legend gathered around his name …

…taught that the earth was a sphere, and in math he distinguished the difference between composite and prime numbers, discovered irrational numbers, and proved the Pythagorean Theorem. This stated that when the two shorter sides in a right triangle were squared and then added, it would equal the square of the longest side or hypotenuse. Although this was known one thousand years earlier with the Babylonians, he was the first to prove it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**