Pythagoras

Pythagoras was a very significant person in the history of the world. He was a man who was not content with accepting things as they are. He needed explanations and reasons. Pythagoras was an ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher. Pythagoras was responsible for important developments in the history of mathematics, astronomy, and the theory of music.

The thing that Pythagoras is probably the most famous for is the Pythagorean Theorem. The Pythagorean Theorem is used in the field of mathematics and it states the following: the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two other sides. This means that if one makes a square (with all sides equal in length) out of a triangle with a right angle, the areas of the squares made from the two shorter sides, when added together, equal the area of the square made from the long side. Another geometrical discovery made by Pythagoras is that the diagonal of a square is not a rational multiple of its side. The latter discovery proved the existence of irrational numbers and therefore changed the entire Greek mathematical belief that whole numbers and their ratios could account for geometrical properties. He also discovered a formula to find out how many degrees there are in a polygon. Pythagoras came up with (n-2)180o= the number of degrees in a polygon, where (n) represents the number of sides in the polygon. For example, a triangle has three sides, 3-2=1, 1x180=180, which is the total sum of all the inner angles of a triangle. Along with that he found out that the sum of all the outer angles of a polygon is always equal to three hundred sixty degrees. This is true for every single polygon, regardless of the number of the sides.

Pythagoras and his disciples connected music with mathematics and found that intervals between notes can be expressed in numerical terms. Pythagoras noticed that vibrating strings produce harmonious tones when the ratios of the lengths of the strings are whole numbers. They discovered that the length of strings of a musical instrument correspond to these intervals and that they can be expressed in numbers. The ratio of the length of two strings with which two tones of an octave step are produced is 2:1. After making this discovery, he found that these same ratios could be extended further to other instruments.

Pythagoras was one of the first to teach that the Earth was at the center of the universe. He was also one of the first to teach that the world was round, an idea not to be proven for almost another one thousand years. Pythagoras also discovered that the orbit of the moon is inclined to the equator of the Earth. He also was the first person to make the connection that Venus as the evening star is the same as Venus the morning