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Pythagoras born and died

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Pythagoras of Samos
an outline biography


  The famous Greek philosopher mathematician Pythagoras was born circa 570 B.C. on Samos an island lying off the western coast of Asia Minor. Samos was at this time one of the colonies that had been developed by the city states of ancient Greece centred upon Asia Minor and the islands lying off its coasts. Such colonisation had been encouraged moreso by population pressures and political turmoils in ancient Greece rather than by the prospect of trading opportunities.

  At this remove it is difficult to be precise about Pythagoras and his background, 570 B.C. is rather a long time ago and records were not really maintained even about prominent or controversial figures.

  It is suggested that his mother came from amongst the colonial Greeks of Samos but that his father was a Phoenician craftsperson from Tyre who worked with precious metals and who had been granted citizenship rights after bringing corn to Samos at a time of famine.

  Pythagoras seems to have had an impressive birthmark on his thigh that, amongst his fellows, was hel

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Pythagoras of Samos

Pythagoras of Samos is often described as the first pure mathematician. He is an extremely important figure in the development of mathematics yet we know relatively little about his mathematical achievements. Unlike many later Greek mathematicians, where at least we have some of the books which they wrote, we have nothing of Pythagoras's writings. The society which he led, half religious and half scientific, followed a code of secrecy which certainly means that today Pythagoras is a mysterious figure.

We do have details of Pythagoras's life from early biographies which use important original sources yet are written by authors who attribute divine powers to him, and whose aim was to present him as a god-like figure. What we present below is an attempt to collect together the most reliable sources to reconstruct an account of Pythagoras's life. There is fairly good agreement on the main events of his life but most of the dates are disputed with different scholars giving dates which differ by 20 years. Some historians treat all this information as merely lege
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Pythagoras

Greek philosopher (c. 570 – c. 495 BC)

"Pythagoras of Samos" redirects here. For the Samian statuary, see Pythagoras (sculptor).

For other uses, see Pythagoras (disambiguation).

Pythagoras of Samos[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)[b] was an ancient IonianGreek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the

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