In Cicero’s dialogue “On Old Age,” the great Roman statesman Cato tells us how he occupies his time once he is no longer able to take an active role in public life. First, he was busy on the seventh ...

Note: Thumbnail image of Pythagoras is from the University of California, Riverside Physics & Astronomy website. The Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, founded a school around the fifth century B.C.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “the music of the spheres,” your first thought probably wasn’t about mathematics. But in its historical origin, the music of the spheres actually was all about math. In ...

Most people don’t remember math class, but they do remember Pythagoras. Greek philosopher and mathematician, he is credited with one of the handiest formulae any school student could know: A squared ...

The Pythagorean Theorem troubled the devoted followers of the Greek philosopher, who built a worldview based on numbers. The formula comes in handy in construction, land surveying and navigation, ...

The ancient scholar Hippasus of Metapontum was punished with death for his discovery of irrational numbers—or at least that’s the legend. What actually happened in the fifth century B.C.E. is far from ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...

If you remember little else from high school geometry, you probably remember the Pythagorean Theorem: The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other ...