Pythagoras discovered his famous theorem around 500 BC. At the time, it was heralded as one of the brightest ideas of humanity.
For any given right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse always equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
It baffled and impressed people because there were few immutable mathematical theorems at the time. Furthermore, it was something easy for many to understand.
Fast forward 2,500 years, and what was once a shining star of the human intellect is now a run-of-the-mill subject in 7th grade mathematics classes.
Children spend 2-3 weeks learning the theorem, and then move on.
It’s a stunning example of how our world, humanity, and knowledge progress over time.
P.S. Over the past few days, about 10% of my blog posts haven’t been delivered. I spoke to Feedblitz and there was an issue with my RSS Feed used to automatically send out each day’s post. This should be fixed now.
Thanks to Simone and Dan for pointing out the bug!