Pythagoras, from a 1920s textbook. Photograph: © Blue Lantern Studio/CorbisFrom The Guardian:
Alex Bellos selects the maths geniuses whose revolutionary discoveries changed our world.
Pythagoras (circa 570-495BC)
Vegetarian mystical leader and number-obsessive, he owes his standing as the most famous name in maths due to a theorem about right-angled triangles, although it now appears it probably predated him. He lived in a community where numbers were venerated as much for their spiritual qualities as for their mathematical ones. His elevation of numbers as the essence of the world made him the towering primogenitor of Greek mathematics, essentially the beginning of mathematics as we know it now. And, famously, he didn't eat beans.
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