The Pythagorean Theorem: A 4,000-year HistoryBy any measure, the Pythagorean theorem is the most famous statement in all of mathematics, one remembered from high school geometry class by even the most math-phobic students. Well over four hundred proofs are known to exist, including ones by a twelve-year-old Einstein, a young blind girl, Leonardo da Vinci, and a future president of the United States. Here--perhaps for the first time in English--is the full story of this famous theorem. Although attributed to Pythagoras, the theorem was known to the Babylonians more than a thousand years before him. He may have been the first to prove it, but his proof--if indeed he had one--is lost to us. Euclid immortalized it as Proposition 47 in his Elements, and it is from there that it has passed down to generations of students. The theorem is central to almost every branch of science, pure or applied. It has even been proposed as a means to communicate with extraterrestrial beings, if and when we discover them. And, expanded to four-dimensional space-time, it plays a pivotal role in Einstein's theory of relativity. In this book, Eli Maor brings to life many of the characters that played a role in the development of the Pythagorean theorem, providing a fascinating backdrop to perhaps our oldest enduring mathematical legacy. |
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... mathematics , one remembered from high school geometry class by even the most math - phobic students . Well over ... mathematical legacy . The Pythagorean Theorem This One 7AQZ - EL5-4L4F A C.
... mathematics . —Jacob Bronowski , The Ascent of Man , p . l60 Preface Though its roots are in geometry , the theorem universally attributed to Pythagoras has found its way into nearly every branch of science , pure or ap- plied . Well ...
... mathematics teacher from Ohio , spent a lifetime collecting all known proofs — 371 of them — and writing them up in The Pythagorean Proposition ( l927 ) .3 Loomis claimed that in the Middle Ages , it was required that a student taking ...
... mathematical formulas ; you will find the expres- sion x2 + y2 in nearly every chapter , often tucked inside a larger ... mathematics and on our culture in general , starting with the Baby- lonians nearly four thousand years ago and ...
... mathematics . Mostly , a good knowledge of high school alge- bra and geometry , and an occasional smattering of ... Mathematics ( Fort Worth , Texas : Saunders , l992 ) , and David Eugene Smith , History of Mathematics , vol . 1 ...
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Analytic Hyperbolic Geometry and Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity Abraham A. Ungar No preview available - 2008 |