Pythagoras

Most, if not all, of the facts about Pythagoras are disputed by historians. He did not write anything himself so all information has been provided by others - either his followers or later historians. The following is agreed by many to be approximately true!

Pythagoras was born about 569 BC in Samos, Ionia and died about 475 BC.

He was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, whose doctrines strongly influenced Plato. Born on the island of Sámos, Pythagoras was instructed in the teachings of the early Ionian philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Pythagoras is said to have been driven from Sámos by his disgust for the tyranny of Polycrates. About 530 BC Pythagoras settled in Crotona, a Greek colony in southern Italy, where he founded a movement with religious, political, and philosophical aims, known as Pythagoreanism.

Pythagoras argued that there are three kinds of men. The lowest consists of those who come to buy and sell, and next above them are those who come to compete. Best of all are those who simply come to look on.

These pages explain the famous mathematical result known as Pythagoras's Theorem, give you various interactive proofs of the theorem, problems based on the theorem, and mathematical things related to the theorem.