Hi, I’m Pythagoras

1. 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

2. 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. Xenophon Socrates Plato Ptolemy Diogenes Heraclitus Aristotle Me Euclid

3. I was a philosopher, a diplomat, a musician, a prisoner… and, some say, even a murderer. But above all I was a mathematikoi in the secret society I founded at Croton in what is now south Italy. was a philosopher, a diplomat,

4. In Croton… • We ate no beans or meat • 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... was a philosopher, a diplomat,

5. …The ancient Babylonians… the Chinese… the Egyptians… and the mathematicians of India all knew that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the opposite two sides. I wasn’t even born when they were using ‘Pythagoras’ theorem’. was a philosopher, a diplomat, From the Chou Pei and a Babylonian cuneiform tablet

6. But we did discover that Ö2 is ‘irrational’… it cannot be represented by any fraction. It just goes on for ever and ever! Ö2= 1.414213562… For years we mathematakoi argued such numbers were not 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 mathematakoi, maths was perfect. was a philosopher, a diplomat,

7. But in the end our neighbours in Croton did not like our secretive ways. Our commune was attacked. Lots and lots of my friends died in the attack. I fled to a place called Metaponteum. And I died when a mob set fire to the commune where I was living… and doing maths. was a philosopher, a diplomat,