Historical Notes: The Immortal (Appeal of) Pythagoras

摘要

Every so often a famous, or an infamous mathematician, makes it into the news. Had the global media existed in the fifth century bc it would have probably reported on the demise of Pythagoras somewhere in the woods above Croton in Magna Graecia in the late summer of495 bc (or thereabouts). We may imagine what this news might have included: his mathematics certainly, but also his beliefs on the transmigration of souls, his asceticism, vegetarian lifestyle, and his circle of followers - one of whom disappeared in suspicious circumstances (some say as a consequence of his divulging the secret of irrationality of √2 to the uninitiated).