PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras of Samos was a famous Greek mathematician and philosopher. He is known best for
the proof of the important Pythagorean theorem, which is about right triangles. He started a group of
mathematicians, called the Pythagoreans, who worshiped numbers and lived like monks. He was an
influence for Plato.
He had a great impact on mathematics, theory of music and astronomy. His theories are still used in
mathematics today. He was one of the greatest thinkers of his time.
Pythagoras was born in Samos, a little island of the western coast of Asia Minor. There is not much
information about his life. He was said to have had a good childhood. Growing up with two or three
brothers, he was well educated. He did not agree with the government and their schooling, so he
moved to Croton and set up his own cult (little society) of followers under his rule. His followers did
not have any personal possessions, and they were all vegetarians. Pythagoras taught them all, and
they had to obey strict rules.

Some say he was the first person to use the term philosophy. Since he
worked very closely with his group, the Pythagoreans, it is sometimes hard to tell his
works from those of his followers.
Religion was important to the Pythagoreans. They swore their oaths by
"1+2+3+4" (which equals 10). They also believed the soul is immortal and
goes through a cycle of rebirths until it can become pure. They believed
that these souls were in both animal and plant life.
LIFEHISTORY

Born Approximately 569 BC, Samos Greece

Died Approximately 500 - 475 BC, Metapontum Italy

P ythagoras is often referred to as the first pure mathematician. He was born on the island
of Samos, Greece in 569 BC. Various writings place his death between 500 BC and 475 BC
in Metapontum, Lucania, Italy. His father, Mnesarchus, was a gem merchant. His mother's
name was Pythais. Pythagoras had two or three brothers.

Some historians say that Pythagoras was married to a woman named Theano and had a
daughter Damo, and a son named Telauges, who succeeded Pythagoras as a teacher and
possibly taught Empedocles. Others say that Theano was one of his students, not his wife,
and say that Pythagoras never married and had no children.

Pythagoras was well educated, and he played the lyre throughout his lifetime, knew poetry
and recited Homer. He was interested in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and music,
and was greatly influenced by Pherekydes (philosophy), Thales (mathematics and
astronomy) and Anaximander (philosophy, geometry).

Pythagoras left Samos for Egypt in about 535 B.C. to study with the priests in the temples.
Many of the practices of the society he created later in Italy can be traced to the beliefs of
Egyptian priests, such as the codes of secrecy, striving for purity, and refusal to eat beans
or to wear animal skins as clothing.

Pythagoras believed:
 All things are numbers. Mathematics is the
basis for everything, and geometry is the
highest form of mathematical studies. The
physical world can understood through
mathematics.

The soul resides in the brain, and is

immortal. It moves from one being to
another, sometimes from a human into an
animal, through a series of reincarnations called transmigration until it becomes
pure. Pythagoras believed that both mathematics and music could purify.

Numbers have personalities, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.

The world depends upon the interaction of opposites, such as male and female,
lightness and darkness, warm and cold, dry and moist, light and heavy, fast and
slow.

Certain symbols have a mystical significance.

All members of the society should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.
Because of the strict secrecy among the members of Pythagoras' society, and the fact that
they shared ideas and intellectual discoveries within the group and did not give individuals
credit, it is difficult to be certain whether all the theorems attributed to Pythagoras were
originally his, or whether they came from the communal society of the Pythagoreans. Some
of the students of Pythagoras eventually wrote down the theories, teachings and
discoveries of the group, but the Pythagoreans always gave credit to Pythagoras as the
Master for:

1. The sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles.

2. The theorem of Pythagoras - for a right-angled triangle the square on the

hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. The
Babylonians understood this 1000 years earlier, but Pythagoras proved it.

3. Constructing figures of a given area and geometrical algebra. For example they
solved various equations by geometrical means.

4. The discovery of irrational numbers is attributed to the Pythagoreans, but seems

unlikely to have been the idea of Pythagoras because it does not align with his
philosophy the all things are numbers, since number to him meant the ratio of two
whole numbers.

5. The five regular solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron).

It is believed that Pythagoras knew how to construct the first three but not last two.

6. Pythagoras taught that Earth was a sphere in the center of the Kosmos (Universe),
that the planets, stars, and the universe were spherical because the sphere was the
most perfect solid figure. He also taught that the paths of the planets were circular.
Pythagoras recognized that the morning star was the same as the evening star,
Venus.
Pythagoras studied odd and even numbers, triangular numbers, and perfect numbers.
Pythagoreans contributed to our understanding of angles, triangles, areas, proportion,
polygons, and polyhedra.

Pythagoras also related music to mathematics. He had long played the seven string lyre,
and learned how harmonious the vibrating strings sounded when the lengths of the strings
were proportional to whole numbers, such as 2:1, 3:2, 4:3. Pythagoreans also realized that
this knowledge could be applied to other musical instruments.

The reports of Pythagoras' death are varied. He is said to have been killed by an angry
mob, to have been caught up in a war between the Agrigentum and the Syracusans and
killed by the Syracusans, or been burned out of his school in Crotona and then went to
Metapontum where he starved himself to death. At least two of the stories include a scene
where Pythagoras refuses to trample a crop of bean plants in order to escape, and because
of this, he is caught.

The Pythagorean Theorem is a cornerstone of mathematics, and continues to be so

interesting to mathematicians that there are more than 400 different proofs of the theorem,
including an original proof by President Garfield.

- Charlene Douglass, California, 2005

CONTRIBUTIONS
Although one of Pythagoras' contributions to mathematics was the Pythagorean
Theorem, he also proved other axioms, worked on prime and composite numbers
and found an irrational number. Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician who was a
student of Thales, another Greek mathematician
Pythagoras' famous theorem states that the sum of the square of the shorter sides
of a right triangle is equal to the square of the longer side, which is the hypotenuse.
He also worked on proving various other theorems or axioms, including that the
square root of two, which is an irrational number, could not be given in the form of an
integer or fraction. He also discovered that 28 was a perfect number.

Pythagoras' greatest contribution to the mathematical society of today

isPythagoras theorem. It is believed that the theory of a2+b2=c2 was known to the
Babylonians 1000 years before Pythagoras but it was he who was able to prove it.
1.The sum of the angle is a triangles equal to two right angles.

He studied many different types of numbers ,for example triangles, odd numbers and perfect
squares. He believed that each number had its own personality traits and were all different and
unique. For example ten is the best number because it contains four consecutive integers
(1+2+3+4=10)

The following are a list of theorems contributed by Pythagoras

1.The sum of the angle is a triangles equal to two right angles.

2.The Pythagorean theorem

3.Construction figures of a given area and geometrical algebra.

4.The discovery of irrationals

5.The five regular solids.

6. Pythagoras taught that the earth was a sphere in the center of the universe.
Pythagoras life came to and end in approximately 475 B.C. Many of his contributions
are still used in everyday math of today's generation.

Pythagoras is also credited with the discovery that the intervals between harmonious
musical notes always have whole number ratios. For instance, playing half a length of a
guitar string gives the same note as the open string, but an octave higher; a third of a
length gives a different but harmonious note; etc. Non-whole number ratios, on the other
hand, tend to give dissonant sounds. In this way, Pythagoras described the first four
overtones which create the common intervals which have become the primary building
blocks of musical harmony: the octave (1:1), the perfect fifth (3:2), the perfect fourth
(4:3) and the major third (5:4). The oldest way of tuning the 12-note chromatic scale is
known as Pythagorean tuning, and it is based on a stack of perfect fifths, each tuned in
the ratio 3:2.

The mystical Pythagoras was so excited by this discovery that he became convinced
that the whole universe was based on numbers, and that the planets and stars moved
according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes, and thus
produced a kind of symphony, the Musical Universalis or Music of the Spheres.

Bibliography
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1959).

2. Cohen, S. Marc. Pythagoras. The World Book Encyclopedia

3. Heath, T.L., A History of Greek Mathematics (Oxford, 1931)

4. Knierim, Thomas. http://www.thebigview.com/greeks/index.html

5. Laertius, Diogenes. The Lives of Eminent

Philosophers.http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/LaertiosPythagoras.htm
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the Hypotenuse." http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_11_27_00.html

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