Pythagoras

Hello! My name is Pythagoras. I lived a very, very long time ago, in a sunny place called Ancient Greece. I was born on a beautiful island called Samos around the year 570 BCE. Even when I was a little boy, I was full of questions! I didn’t just want to know what things were; I wanted to know why. I especially loved numbers. To me, they weren't just for counting sheep or olives. I believed numbers were a secret code that could explain everything in the whole universe, from the twinkling stars to the music people played.

When I grew up, I wanted to learn all I could, so I went on a big adventure. I traveled to faraway lands like Egypt and Babylon. I saw giant pyramids that touched the sky and met wise people who had studied the stars for many years. On my travels, I learned so much about mathematics, which is the study of numbers and shapes. I noticed that numbers were everywhere! They were in the patterns of a flower, the rhythm of a song, and the shapes of buildings. I realized that if you understood numbers, you could understand the world in a whole new way. It was the most exciting discovery!

After many years of traveling, around 530 BCE, I moved to a city called Croton in what is now Italy. I decided to start my own school to share everything I had learned. But it wasn't a normal school with desks and blackboards. It was a community of friends who lived and learned together. We were called the Pythagoreans. We studied numbers, music, geometry, and how to be good people. We believed that living a simple, kind life was just as important as solving a tricky math problem.

One of the things I am most famous for is a special rule about triangles. Not just any triangle, but one with a perfect square corner, called a right-angled triangle. I discovered that if you draw a square on each of the two shorter sides, and then add the size of those two squares together, they will equal the exact size of a square on the longest side! This idea, called the Pythagorean theorem, might sound like a riddle, but it's a super useful trick that people still use today to build strong houses and straight roads.

I lived a long and happy life filled with curiosity and numbers, and I lived to be about 75 years old. Even though I passed away around the year 495 BCE, my ideas have lived on for thousands of years. Every time you solve a math problem with a right-angled triangle or listen to the harmony in music, you are sharing in the world of wonder that I loved so much. I hope you remember that numbers aren't just for homework—they are the building blocks of our amazing universe.