Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras was born about 569bc in Samos Ionia. Little is known about Pythagoras because he didn't write down anything, but we do know he was well educated, and he played the lyre. Since his father was a merchant he was able to travel to various places across the Mediterranean. So early on, he was taught by many different people. He was taught by a lot of different philosophers too. Among them, three teachers had a lasting effect on him. Pherekydes was his main teacher but Thales and Anaximander encouraged Pythagoras to study math and geometry. They advised him to go to Egypt to learn more, so he did. He ended up studying in Egypt, Babylon, and Crete until he ended up in Croton. He founded a school there where he discovered all of his accomplishments.

Since he and his students studied in secret, they didn't keep track of who discovered what. So it is not sure of what Pythagoras himself actually discovered. But the school made a lot of discoveries. Pythagoras thought that everything was made of numbers or some sort of ratio of numbers. He discovered platonic solids or solids made of congruent convex polygons like the cube. He also discovered that strings only resonate only at ratios of whole numbers. He also discovered irrational numbers. Pythagoras proved the Pythagorean Theorem. He proved that in a right triangle, the square of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse. It was already known by the Babylonians but He was the first to prove it. He also found that the angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees. Pythagoras has contributed a lot in mathematics and geometry.