Pythagoras 570 BC – 495 BC

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher and mathematician born on the island of Samos around 570 BC. He founded a religious and philosophical brotherhood at Croton in southern Italy, where his followers pursued a communal life of study, asceticism, and ritual purification. The Pythagoreans held that number is the principle of all things and that the cosmos is structured by mathematical ratios, an idea that profoundly influenced Plato. Pythagoras left no writings, and the doctrines transmitted under his name combine his own teachings with those of his school. His influence on Western mathematics, music theory, and metaphysics is foundational.