Pythagoras - the Philosopher Who Hated Beans

Every schoolchild knows Pythagoras. His right angle triangle gives us one of the two most famous formulas in science and even the worst maths student can understand it. This makes it easier than the other famous formula, Einstein’s e = mc², which everybody knows but nobody understands.

The only problem is that we cannot be sure that Pythagoras was a real man. And we certainly do not know that he made his famous formula:

a² + b² = c² to calculate the sides of his right angle triangle.

Maybe, Pythagoras was born in the sixth century BC on an island called Samos in Greece. Perhaps, he went to southern Italy and taught young men there. We have many stories about him. For example, he had a gold thigh. But if you don’t believe that, there are other stories about him that you maybe prefer.

Here are some: Pythagoras could talk to animals – he especially liked eagles and bears; he knew when earthquakes were going to happen; he could remember his past lives; and he travelled to the afterlife and went back to Italy later. By the way, he died because he hated beans and did not want to run across a field of them when some soldiers were running after him. He preferred the soldiers to kill him. You see: he really, really hated beans!

The problem with these stories is that we can read them in the same book as his mathematical ideas. So, can we believe Pythagoras made the famous a² + b² = c² but not believe that bears could chat with him about this, that and the other?

Perhaps the most important thing about Pythagoras is this: mathematics is the way the world works. Nature is all about maths. When Kepler used maths to calculate the paths of the planets and Newton explained his theory of gravity, they both knew that the universe worked mathematically.

And that idea came from Pythagoras and his right angle triangle.