Pythagoras

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Pythagoras (c.580–500 bc) Greek philosopher and founder of the Pythagorean school. The Pythagoreans were bound to their teacher by rigid vows and were ascetic in their way of life. They believed in the transmigration of souls and that numbers and their interrelationships constitute the true nature of the universe. Pythagoras is credited with advances in mathematics and geometry, medicine and philosophy. The famous theorem, that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides, is named after him, but was already known to the Egyptians and Babylonians. His school was suppressed at the end of the 6th century, but the Romans revived its doctrines c.500 years later.

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