Okay, so just about
everyone who was
conscious during
junior high math class has heard of the
Pythagorean Theorem. You know, the
hypotenuse squared of a
right triangle is equal to the sums of the other
two legs squared.
My
question is a simple one: how do we
really know that
Pythagoras himself discovered this
property of
triangles? Could there be
some other reason why the
theorem has the name it does? Did it just eeem like
a good idea at the time, kind of like how some people actually
name their children after soft drinks?
My
theory is that
Pythagoras was actually a
criminal of the worst kind,
whatever that may have been in
ancient Greece. After
capturing him and giving him his normal
punishment, the
Greeks decided to
hurt him even worse. Some
lowly mathematician somewhere had just discovered a new
property of triangles. Recognizing the
potential impact on
mathematics and the fact that it would surely be
required reading, the
Greeks decided to name the
theorem after
Pythagoras so that for
millennia to come,
schoolchildren would
curse his name.