QuickCheck: Did Pythagoras discover his eponymous theorem?

EVERYONE who's been to secondary school knows that Pythagoras discovered the fact that for all right-angled triangles, “the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides".

Did the Greek philosopher really develop the Pythagoras Theorem?

Verdict:

FALSE

While Pythagoras is often credited for discovering the famous theorem, to the point that it is even named after him, the Babylonians were using Pythogras' Theorem over 1,000 years before he was born.

A 3,700-year-old tablet discovered in central Iraq in 1894 shows that the Babylonians used the theorem to measure accurate right angles for surveying land.

The tablet was a cadastral document which is a plan used by surveyors to define land boundaries accurately.

This not only shows that Pythagoras wasn't the first to come up with the theorem, but also that your maths teacher was right in saying that the theorem had real-world uses!

The theorem is mentioned in the Baudhayana Sulba sutra of India, which was written between 800BC and 400BC.

Reference:

1. https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/the-babylonians-were-using-pythagoras-theorem-over-1000-years-before-he-was-born/

2. https://www.britannica.com/science/Pythagorean-theorem