Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

  • Smokeydope@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    who curses pythagoras?

    At the very least that one guy who got drowned for blasphemy by the pythagoras cult, because he proved that the hypotenuse of a triangle with a base of 1 is an irrational number.

    Also to be fair I imagine more people are cursing Euler for having his name stapled to half of every theorem and proof it seems.

    • BigDanishGuy
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you start talking about irrationality to a cult you’re kinda asking for it. sqrt(2) is a beautifully irrational number!

    • havokdj@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Not gonna lie, that’s extremely comical and on par for pre-early modern humanity

    • credit crazy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      From what I recall from learning about who Pythagoras was as a person he really liked talking things out while sailing