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Comment by sn41 | Hacker News Reader

The earliest known proof of Pythagorean theorem is due to Euclid. It is strange at all that any credit is attributed to Pythagoras, since Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians and Chinese all had discovered this [1]. And Pythagoras did not prove his theorem, to the best of our knowledge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#History

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Also weird that (more generally) Euclid is only rarely mentioned by name, and more often nearly anonymously as the author of Elements. Yet, Pythagoras is named early and often.

Euclid got Euclidean geometry, and that’s not nothing.

From what I remember from my epistemology courses, it's due to historiographical reasons: there are a lot of cross reference of the existence of Pythagoras from other texts, so his historical context and existence is well anchored. As for Euclid, apart from the Elements, there is pretty much no mention of him anywhere, which is even more troubling since the depth and reach of the Elements is massive and should have had an impact at the time. This led some people to think that Euclid may not be a person but a group of people.

This is what I remember from courses 15 years ago, I may be wrong or outdated on the subject ;)

This is close to what I was taught. I don’t know ancient Greek, so I wonder if that language draws a distinction between singular and plural in the way “the author” of Elements is structured.

Fwiw, I do recall that Pythagoras seems to have forbidden written records, so what survives are his followers’ notes, who apparently gave him singular credit where we might expect a collaboration.

> I don’t know ancient Greek, so I wonder if that language draws a distinction between singular and plural in the way “the author” of Elements is structured.

I don't know what you mean by "in the way 'the author' of Elements is structured", but yes, Greek draws a distinction between singular and plural. (And dual, though to a lesser degree.)

I mean the structure of the way later writers refer to Euclid. Apparently, from Wikipedia, "ὁ στοιχειώτης" but I hope an improved discussion/potential rabbithole occurs if we know whether that unambiguously translates to one male author.

Yes, it unambiguously translates to one male. That question is easy. A literal translation would be something like "the Elements guy".

But it doesn't mean the author was one male. Lots of texts have attributed authorship. The Homeric Hymns are attributed to "Homer". The Gospel of Luke is attributed to "Luke".

Euclidian plane.... term is used all the time. Euclidian Geometry as well.

His ideas have a large part in Math and Geometry

Pythagoras isn't named so much in his aspect as a mathematician. He's named because he is the center of a major Greek mystery cult. (The other major cult being centered around Orpheus.)

How would one discover the Pythagorean theorem without having a proof?

You could draw a right angle triangle and notice that the squares match without being able to prove that.

How would you notice that without proof? Seeing that two squares sum to the same area as a third isn't easy.

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