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Encyclopedia > Theodorus of Cyrene

Theodorus of Cyrene was a Greek mathematician of the 5th century BC who was admired by Plato (who mentions him in several of his works, most notably the Theatetus) . Little is known about him; however, Plato attributes to him the first proof of the irrationality of the square roots of 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 17. The method he used is not stated, but since he stopped at 17, it seems that he used the traditional Pythagorean method of odds and evens, since 17 is the first number this method breaks down[1]. This article is about Theodorus the Atheist from Cyrene. ... Leonhard Euler, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and research is the field of mathematics. ... The 5th century BC started the first day of 500 BC and ended the last day of 401 BC. // The Parthenon of Athens seen from the hill of the Pnyx to the west. ... PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... The Theætetus (Θεαίτητος) is one of Platos dialogues concerning the nature of knowledge. ... In mathematics, a proof is a demonstration that, assuming certain axioms, some statement is necessarily true. ... In mathematics, an irrational number is any real number that is not a rational number — that is, it is a number which cannot be expressed as a fraction m/n, where m and n are integers, with n non-zero. ... In mathematics, a square root of a number x is a number r such that , or in words, a number r whose square (the result of multiplying the number by itself) is x. ... The square root of 3 is equal to the length across the flat sides of a regular hexagon with sides of length 1. ...


One conjecture involves a spiral composed of contiguous right triangles with hypotenuse lengths equal to the square root of 2, square root of 3, square root of 4,..., up to the square root of 17 (where he stopped - possibly because additional triangles would cause the diagram to overlap, although one mathematician humorously suggested that "the bell rang"). There is no historical evidence for this, however. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A right triangle and its hypotenuse, h, along with catheti, c1 and c2. ...


His pupil Theaetetus made the generalization that the side of any square, represented by a surd, was incommensurable with the linear unit.[2] Theaetetus (ca. ... In mathematics, an nth root of a number a is a number b such that bn=a. ...


Philip J. Davis interpolated the vertices of the spiral to get a continuous curve that he named the Spiral of Theodorus. He discusses the history of attempts to determine Theodorus' method in his book Spirals: From Theodorus to Chaos, and makes brief references to the matter in his fictional Thomas Gray series. Philip J. Davis is an American applied mathematician. ... In the mathematical subfield of numerical analysis, interpolation is a method of constructing new data points from a discrete set of known data points. ...


References

  1. ^ James R. Choike (1980). "Theodorus' Irrationality Proofs". The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal. 
  2. ^ James Gow (1884). A Short History of Greek Mathematics. University press. 

See also


  Results from FactBites:
 
Cyrene and the Cyrenaica (1700 words)
Cyrene was founded in c.630 BCE as a colony of the Greek island town Thera, which had become (or was perceived to be) too crowded.
From Cyrene, the cult spread to the Greek mainland, and was especially propagated by the famous poet Pindar (522-445).
Cyrene was the hometown of several famous Greek scholars and scientists.
Encyclopedia: Theodorus of Cyrene (439 words)
Theodorus of Cyrene was a pupil of Protagoras and himself the tutor of Plato, teaching him mathematics, and also the tutor of Theaetetus.
Theodorus, however, did not spend his whole life in Cyrene for he was certainly in Athens at a time when Socrates was alive.
Theodorus is remembered by mathematicians for his contribution to the development of irrational numbers and it is this aspect of his work which Plato describes (see for example [5]):-
  More results at FactBites »


 

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