Born: 582? - 500? BC in Samos, Ionia {y-ohn'-ee-uh}

Died: about 500 BC in Metapontum, Lucania

Short Biography

Pythagoras was a Greek religious leader and philosopher, who furthered our knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, and music theory. He moved to Croton, a city in southern Italy, where he started a religious and philosophical school. He had many followers called the Pythagoreans. The work of Pythagoras and his followers can not be separated because the school in which they worked was bound to secrecy. The most important idea of the Pythagoreans was their belief that most concepts could be understood through mathematics. Pythagoras or his students proved the converse theorem, though it had been used much earlier in Egypt.

The school’s most important discovery was that there are irrational numbers - numbers with decimals that do not terminate, or repeat. The theorems and ideas of Pythagoras and his followers are still studied today in geometry.