Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher who was born on the islands of Samos, in the Aegean Sea and he was the founder of the Pythagorean Theorem that we use to find out if a triangle is a right triangle. He was born around 560 B.C. and died around 480 B.C. He was originally from the city of Samos, Ionia. From Samos he moved to the city of Croton. In Croton he established a school. The school was a philosophical and religious school. This school practiced in secret so not very many records survived and little is known. Students of Pythagoras' school were called Pythagoreans. These Pythagoreans believed that everything could be reduced to numbers. They said that all things are numbers. The Pythagoreans studied triangles with the ratio 3:4:5. They noticed that all 3:4:5 triangles are right triangles. Using that triangle, Pythagoreans came up with the Pythagorean Theorem. He stated that the square of the hypotenuse equals the squares of the other two sides. In the 3:4:5 triangle, 5 is the hypotenuse and 3 and 4 are the legs. The angle opposite of the hypotenuse is a right angle. Since the hypotenuse squared equals the two legs squared, the equation should be leg squared times leg squared is equal to hypotenuse squared. He played an important role in forming principals that influenced many people such as Plato and even Aristotle. Pythagoras is an extremely important person in the world of math, but the sad thing is we know very little about his mathematical achievements.

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