Pythagoras of Samos (570-495 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic, and scientist and is best known for the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse, the side opposite the right angle, is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom, and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato, and through him, all of Western philosophy. No texts by Pythagoras are known to have survived. Engraving from The History of Philosophy by Thomas Stanley published in three successive volumes between 1655 and |