Timeline: History of Pythagorean Theorem

1900 BCE

Babylonians- Pythagorean Theorem

The first record of the Pythagorean Theorem date back to the Babylonians/Egyptians

1800 BCE

Egyptians- Pythagorean Theorem

The Egyptians were said to have used the Pythagorean Theorem to build the Great Pyramids

1690 BCE

Plimpton 322 - Pythagorean Triples

Babylonian Tablet. The rows and columns on this table contain Pythagorean triples: integer solutions for the equation a2+b2=c2

570 BCE

The Life of Pythagoras

Pythagoras lived from 570 BCE - 490 BCE. Pythagoras is said be the first to prove the Pythagorean Theorem

400 BCE

Plato - Pythagorean

Plato - Presents way of finding Pythagorean Triples

300 BCE

Euclid- Proved Converse of the Pythagorean Theorem

Euclid (c. 300 BC) offered a clever demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem in his Elements, known as the Windmill proof from the figure’s shape.

1876

President James Garfield - Pythagorean Theorem

Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean Theorem essentially consists of a diagram of a trapezoid with bases a and b and height a+b. He looked at the area of the diagram in two different ways: as that of a trapezoid and as that of three right triangles, two of which are congruent.

1905

Einstein- Proves the Pythagorean Theorem

In Einstein's proof, the shape that includes the hypotenuse is the right triangle itself. The dissection consists of dropping a perpendicular from the vertex of the right angle of the triangle to the hypotenuse, thus splitting the whole triangle into two parts. Those two parts have the same shape as the original right triangle, and have the legs of the original triangle as their hypotenuses, and the sum of their areas is that of the original triangle.

1907