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Articles

Pythagoras & The Numbers Game

Richard Lewis on Pythagoras of Samos.

Pythagoras discovered a rule about right-angled triangles, as every schoolchild knows. What fewer people these days know was that Pythagoras was one of the founders of modern science; his ideas about harmony and numbers inflamed the imaginations of generations to come. He was also a mystic and founded a religious order whose members worshipped mathematics.

Biography

Pythagoras grew up on the rich and cultured island of Samos, in the Aegean, during the reign there of the tyrant Polycrates (6th Century BC). His father was a silversmith called Mnesarchos.

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