Collection: Pythagorean Theorem

In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem, or Pythagoras’s theorem, is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides. This theorem can be written as an equation relating the lengths of the sides a, b and c, often called the Pythagorean equation.

There is debate whether the Pythagorean theorem was discovered once, or many times in many places, and the date of first discovery is uncertain, as is the date of the first proof. Historians of Mesopotamian mathematics have concluded that the Pythagorean rule was in widespread use during the Old Babylonian period (20th to 16th centuries BC), over a thousand years before Pythagoras was born. The history of the theorem can be divided into four parts: knowledge of Pythagorean triples, knowledge of the relationship among the sides of a right triangle, knowledge of the relationships among adjacent angles, and proofs of the theorem within some deductive system.

Written between 2000 and 1786 BC, the Middle Kingdom Egyptian Berlin Papyrus 6619 includes a problem whose solution is the Pythagorean triple 6:8:10, but the problem does not mention a triangle. The Mesopotamian tablet Plimpton 322, written between 1790 and 1750 BC during the reign of Hammurabi the Great, contains many entries closely related to Pythagorean triples.

In India, the Baudhayana Shulba Sutra, the dates of which are given variously as between the 8th and 5th century BC, contains a list of Pythagorean triples and a statement of the Pythagorean theorem, both in the special case of the isosceles right triangle and in the general case, as does the Apastamba Shulba Sutra (c. 600 BC). Van der Waerden believed that this material “was certainly based on earlier traditions”. Carl Boyer states that the Pythagorean theorem in the Śulba-sũtram may have been influenced by ancient Mesopotamian math, but there is no conclusive evidence in favor or opposition of this possibility.

Proclus, writing in the fifth century AD, states two arithmetic rules, “one of them attributed to Plato, the other to Pythagoras”, for generating special Pythagorean triples. The rule attributed to Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) starts from an odd number and produces a triple with leg and hypotenuse differing by one unit; the rule attributed to Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC)) starts from an even number and produces a triple with leg and hypotenuse differing by two units.

According to Thomas L. Heath (1861–1940), no specific attribution of the theorem to Pythagoras exists in the surviving Greek literature from the five centuries after Pythagoras lived. However, when authors such as Plutarch and Cicero attributed the theorem to Pythagoras, they did so in a way which suggests that the attribution was widely known and undoubted.

Whether this formula is rightly attributed to Pythagoras personally, one can safely assume that it belongs to the very oldest period of Pythagorean mathematics.

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