More than 2,500 years ago, around 530 BCE, a man by the name of Pythagoras founded a school in modern southeast Italy. Members of the school, which was actually more of a brotherhood, were bound by a pledge of allegiance to their master Pythagoras and took an oath of silence to not divulge secret discoveries. Pythagoreans shared a common belief in the supremacy of numbers, using them to describe and understand everything from music to the physical universe.

Studying a wide range of intellectual disciplines, Pythagoreans made a multitude of discoveries, many of which were attributed to Pythagoras himself. No records remain of the actual discoverer, so the identity of the true discoverer may never be known. Perhaps the most famous of the Pythagoreans’ contributions to knowledge is proving what has come to be known as the Pythagorean Theorem.

Summary:

• History of the Pythagorean Theorem
• Applying the Pythagorean Theorem
• Proving the Pythagorean Theorem
• Exercises