Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 580–500 BCE) was a great Greek mathematician. As a young man, he was coached by the aging Thales, and he would continue the Greek quest to turn the mathematics of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and early Indians from a practical computational discipline into a beautiful, abstract philosophy. It was Pythagoras who gave us the ubiquitous Pythagorean theorem, which allows us to determine the length of a right triangle’s hypotenuse. Today GPS and maps use this theorem—as well as our very early understanding of numbers and of geometry—to compute distances between two locations. Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, a stone’s throw from the Anatolian Plateau of Asia Minor, which at that time was also part of greater Greece. The island is home to the Temple of Hera, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (although, unlike the almost-intact Great Pyramid, this temple has only one marble column still standing). Today the main town on the island is ...
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