Looking through the lens of
Human Ingenuity
Pythagoras’ theorem
Hi, I’m Pythagoras
I was born about 569bc on the Greek
island of Samos, just off the coast of
what is now western Turkey.
I died some 90 years later… nearly 2,500
years ago.
I travelled far and wide… visiting Egypt
and old Babylon and, some say, even
India… The Buddha was preaching and
Confucius was alive and well in China.
In the ancient world, this meant arduous
and difficult journeys to strange lands.
India?
Samos
Babylon
Samos
Egypt
Of course… no one knows whether I looked like this.
But everyone thinks I had a beard… Raphael Sanzio
painted me and my mates for Pope Julius II in the early
1500s on a wall in the Vatican in Rome. You can still see
me… down there on the left… with a beard and no hair!
I did have a birthmark on my thigh.
Heraclitus
Diogenes
Ptolemy
Plato
Socrates
Xenophon
Aristotle
Me
Euclid
I was a philosopher, a
was a philosopher,
a diplomat,
diplomat,
a musician,
a
prisoner… and, some say,
even a murderer.
But above all I was a
mathematician in the secret
society I founded at Croton in
what is now south Italy.
In Croton…
• Wewas
ate no
beans or meat a
a philosopher,
•diplomat,
We refused to wear clothes made
from animal skin or hair
• We gave up all personal possessions
• We believed in reincarnation and we
could recall the memories from our
previous lives
• We believed women and men were
equal
• We believed the Earth was the centre
of the Universe
• We swore an oath of secrecy and
loyalty
• We studied music, astronomy,
geometry and numbers…
For us numbers and maths were reality,
numbers and mathematics represented
all nature.
We discovered many things… but I did
not discover the theorem for which I
am most famous… that had been
discovered by others before me...
…The
Babylonians…
the
was aancient
philosopher,
a diplomat,
Chinese… the Egyptians… and the
mathematicians of India all knew that
triangles of the ratio 3:4:5 made right
angle triangles.I wasn’t even born
when they were using this fact but my
group was the first to prove it. It is a
secret whether it was me who was
responsible or one of my group.
From the Chou Pei and a Babylonian
cuneiform tablet
By 3000 BC the Egyptians were familiar
with the fact that a triangle with sides in the
ratio 3:4:5 was a right angled triangle.
I wonder if you could tell me with your
wonderful invention of the internet Why and
how they used this fact?m
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/Group3/hist.html
But we
didadiscover
a that 2
was
philosopher,
a
isdiplomat,
in the set of numbers called,
‘irrational’… it cannot be represented
by any fraction. It just goes on for ever
and ever!
2 = 1.414213562…
For years we mathematicians argued
whether such numbers were possible.
We had a big, big row about it.
One of us, Hippasus, ended up floating
upside down in the bay. Some said I
threw him off the cliffs in a fit of
jealousy… others said he had broken
our vow of secrecy. You don’t see his
name in many history books.
We also said numbers have
personalities.
Odd numbers were masculine.
Even numbers were feminine.
And numbers like 6, which equals the
sum of its factors, 1+2+3, is “perfect”.
For us mathematicians, maths was
perfect.
Here are some of my famous quotes:
•Number rules the universe.
•Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and
the cause of gods and demons
•Every man has been made by God in order
to acquire knowledge and contemplate.t,