Pythagoras

pi-thag'o-ras, a Greek mathematician and philosopher. He was born on the isle of Samos. He lived about 582-500 B. C. He traveled extensively and settled down at Crotona, a Greek town in Magna Graecia, Italy. Here he built up a school of philosophy or learning. Many of his ideas were fundamentally correct; others were errors. He set in motion the doctrine that the earth turns on its axis, and that the planets revolve about the sun. He believed that the heavenly bodies in their movements produced heavenly music, celestial harmony. The geometrical principle that the square described upon the hypotenuse of a plane right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares described upon the other two sides is called the Pythagorean Theorem. Pythagoras held to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He thought that at death the soul passed into the body of some animal. He is said to have requested a man to leave off beating a certain dog, declaring that in the cry of the dog he recognized the voice of a deceased friend. See Ptolemy