GREEK MATHEMATICS &

MATHEMATICIAN – Numerals and

Numbers
As the Greek empire began to spread its sphere of influence into Asia
Minor, Mesopotamia 
and beyond, the
Greeks were smart
enough to adopt and
adapt useful elements
from the societies they
Ancient Greek Herodianic numerals
conquered. This was
as true of their mathematics as anything else, and they adopted elements of
mathematics from both the Babylonians and the Egyptians. But they soon
started to make important contributions in their own right and, for the first time,
we can acknowledge contributions by individuals. By the Hellenistic period, the
Greeks had presided over one of the most dramatic and important revolutions
in mathematical thought of all time.

Attic or Herodianic numerals

The ancient Greek numeral system, known as Attic or Herodianic numerals,
was fully developed by about 450 BCE, and in regular use possibly as early as the
7th Century BCE. It was a base 10 system similar to the earlier Egyptian one
(and even more similar to the later Roman system), with symbols for 1, 5, 10, 50,
100, 500 and 1,000 repeated as many times needed to represent the desired
number. Addition was done by totalling separately the symbols (1s, 10s, 100s,
etc) in the numbers to be added, and multiplication was a laborious process
based on successive doublings (division was based on the inverse of this
process).

Thales’ Intercept Theorem

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But most of Greek

mathematics was
based on
geometry. Thales, one
of the Seven Sages of
Ancient Greece, who
lived on the Ionian
coast of Asian Minor in
the first half of the 6th
Century BCE, is usually Thales’ Intercept Theorem

considered to have been the first to lay down guidelines for the abstract
development of geometry, although what we know of his work (such as on
similar and right triangles) now seems quite elementary.

Thales established what has become known as Thales’ Theorem, whereby if a

triangle is drawn within a circle with the long side as a diameter of the circle,
then the opposite angle will always be a right angle (as well as some other
related properties derived from this). He is also credited with another theorem,
also known as Thales’ Theorem or the Intercept Theorem, about the ratios of
the line segments that are created if two intersecting lines are intercepted by a
pair of parallels (and, by extension, the ratios of the sides of similar triangles).

To some extent, however, the legend of the 6th Century BCE

mathematician Pythagoras of Samos has become synonymous with the birth of
Greek mathematics. Indeed, he is believed to have coined both the words
“philosophy” (“love of wisdom“) and “mathematics” (“that which is
learned“). Pythagoras was perhaps the first to realize that a complete system of
mathematics could be constructed, where geometric elements corresponded
with numbers. Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the Pythagorean Theorem) is one of the
best known of all mathematical theorems. But he remains a controversial
figure, as we will see, and Greek mathematics was by no means limited to one
man.

Three
geometrical
problems
Three geometrical
problems in
particular, often
referred to as the
Three Classical
Problems, and all to be
solved by purely The Three Classical Problems
geometric means
using only a straight edge and a compass, date back to the early days of Greek
geometry: “the squaring (or quadrature) of the circle”, “the doubling (or
duplicating) of the cube” and “the trisection of an angle”. These intransigent
problems were profoundly influential on future geometry and led to many
fruitful discoveries, although their actual solutions (or, as it turned out, the
proofs of their impossibility) had to wait until the 19th Century.

Hippocrates of Chios (not to be confused with the great Greek physician

Hippocrates of Kos. A detailed biography here.) was one such Greek
mathematician who applied himself to these problems during the 5th Century
BCE (his contribution to the “squaring the circle” problem is known as the Lune
of Hippocrates). His influential book “The Elements”, dating to around 440 BCE,
was the first compilation of the elements of geometry, and his work was an
important source for Euclid‘s later work.

Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise

It was the Greeks who
first grappled with the
idea of infinity, such as
described in the well-
known paradoxes
attributed to the
philosopher Zeno of
Elea in the 5th
Century BCE. The
most famous of his
paradoxes is that of Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise
Achilles and the
Tortoise, which describes a theoretical race between Achilles and a tortoise.
Achilles gives the much slower tortoise a head start, but by the time Achilles
reaches the tortoise’s starting point, the tortoise has already moved ahead. By
the time Achilles reaches that point, the tortoise has moved on again, etc, etc, so
that in principle the swift Achilles can never catch up with the slow tortoise.

Paradoxes such as this one and Zeno’s so-called Dichotomy Paradox are

based on the infinite divisibility of space and time, and rest on the idea that a
half plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a sixteenth, etc, etc, to infinity will never
quite equal a whole. The paradox stems, however, from the false assumption
that it is impossible to complete an infinite number of discrete dashes in a finite
time, although it is extremely difficult to definitively prove the fallacy. The
ancient Greek Aristotle was the first of many to try to disprove the paradoxes,
particularly as he was a firm believer that infinity could only ever be potential
and not real.

Democritus, most famous for his prescient ideas about all matter being
composed of tiny atoms, was also a pioneer of mathematics and geometry in the
5th – 4th Century BCE, and he produced works with titles like “On Numbers“,
“On Geometrics“, “On Tangencies“, “On Mapping” and “On Irrationals“,
although these works have not survived. We do know that he was among the
first to observe that a cone (or pyramid) has one-third the volume of a cylinder
(or prism) with the same base and height, and he is perhaps the first to have
seriously considered the division of objects into an infinite number of cross-
sections.

However, it is certainly true that Pythagoras in particular greatly influenced

those who came after him, including Plato, who established his famous
Academy in Athens in 387 BCE, and his protégé Aristotle, whose work on logic
was regarded as definitive for over two thousand years. Plato the
mathematician is best known for his description of the five Platonic solids, but
the value of his work as a teacher and popularizer of mathematics can not be
overstated.

Plato’s student Eudoxus of Cnidus is usually credited with the first

implementation of the “method of exhaustion” (later developed
by Archimedes), an early method of integration by successive approximations
which he used for the calculation of the volume of the pyramid and cone. He
also developed a general theory of proportion, which was applicable to
incommensurable (irrational) magnitudes that cannot be expressed as a ratio of
two whole numbers, as well as to commensurable (rational) magnitudes, thus
extending Pythagoras’ incomplete ideas.

Perhaps the most important single contribution of the Greeks, though –

and Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were all influential in this respect – was the
idea of proof, and the deductive method of using logical steps to prove or
disprove theorems from initial assumed axioms. Older cultures, like
the Egyptians and the Babylonians, had relied on inductive reasoning, that is
using repeated observations to establish rules of thumb. It is this concept of
proof that give mathematics its power and ensures that proven theories are as
true today as they were two thousand years ago, and which laid the foundations
for the systematic approach to mathematics of Euclid and those who came after
him.

PYTHAGORAS OF SAMOS
Biography – Who was Pythagoras
It is sometimes claimed that we owe pure mathematics to
Pythagoras, and he is often called the first “true”
mathematician. But, although his contribution was
clearly important, he nevertheless remains a controversial
figure.

He left no mathematical writings himself, and much of Pythagoras of Samos

what we know about Pythagorean thought comes to us (c.570-495 BCE)
from the writings of Philolaus and other later
Pythagorean scholars. Indeed, it is by no means clear whether many (or indeed any) of the
theorems ascribed to him were in fact solved by Pythagoras personally or by his followers.

The school he established at Croton in southern Italy around 530 BCE was the nucleus of a
rather bizarre Pythagorean sect. Although Pythagorean thought was largely dominated by
mathematics, it was also profoundly mystical, and Pythagoras imposed his quasi-religious
philosophies, strict vegetarianism, communal living, secret rites and odd rules on all the
members of his school (including bizarre and apparently random edicts about never urinating
towards the sun, never marrying a woman who wears gold jewellery, never passing an ass
lying in the street, never eating or even touching black fava beans, etc) .

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The members were divided into the “mathematikoi” (or “learners“), who extended and
developed the more mathematical and scientific work that Pythagoras himself began, and the
“akousmatikoi” (or “listeners“), who focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of
his teachings. There was always a certain amount of friction between the two groups and
eventually the sect became caught up in some fierce local fighting and ultimately dispersed.
Resentment built up against the secrecy and exclusiveness of the Pythagoreans and, in 460
BCE, all their meeting places were burned and destroyed, with at least 50 members killed in
Croton alone.
The over-riding dictum of Pythagoras’s school was “All is number” or “God is number”,
and the Pythagoreans
effectively practised a
kind of numerology or
number-worship, and
considered each number
to have its own character
and meaning. For
example, the number one
was the generator of all
numbers; two represented
opinion; three, harmony;
four, justice; five,
marriage; six, creation;
seven, the seven planets or
The Pythagorean Tetractys
“wandering stars”; etc.
Odd numbers were thought of as female and even numbers as male.

The holiest number of all was “Tetractys” or ten, a triangular number composed of the sum
of one, two, three and four. It is a great tribute to the Pythagoreans’ intellectual achievements
that they deduced the special place of the number 10 from an abstract mathematical argument
rather than from something as mundane as counting the fingers on two hands.

However, Pythagoras and his school – as well as a handful of other mathematicians of ancient
Greece – was largely responsible for introducing a more rigorous mathematics than what had
gone before, building from first principles using axioms and logic. Before Pythagoras, for
example, geometry had been merely a collection of rules derived by empirical measurement.

Pythagoras discovered that a complete system of mathematics could be constructed,

where geometric elements corresponded with numbers, and where integers and their ratios
were all that was necessary to establish an entire system of logic and truth.

The Pythagorean Theorem 

He is mainly remembered for what has become known as Pythagoras’ Theorem (or the
Pythagorean Theorem): that, for any right-angled triangle, the square of the length of the
hypotenuse (the longest side, opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the square of the
other two sides (or “legs”).

Written as an
equation: a2 + b2 = c2.

What Pythagoras and his

followers did not realize is
that this also works for
any shape: thus, the area
of a pentagon on the
hypotenuse is equal to the
sum of the pentagons on
the other two sides, as it
does for a semi-circle or
any other regular (or even
irregular( shape.

The simplest and most

Pythagoras’ (Pythagorean) Theorem
commonly quoted
example of a Pythagorean triangle is one with sides of 3, 4 and 5 units (32 + 42 = 52, as can be
seen by drawing a grid of unit squares on each side as in the diagram at right), but there are a
potentially infinite number of other integer “Pythagorean triples”, starting with (5, 12 13),
(6, 8, 10), (7, 24, 25), (8, 15, 17), (9, 40, 41), etc. It should be noted, however that (6, 8, 10) is
not what is known as a “primitive” Pythagorean triple, because it is just a multiple of (3, 4,
5).

Pythagoras’ Theorem and the properties of right-angled triangles seems to be the most
ancient and widespread mathematical development after basic arithmetic and geometry, and it
was touched on in some of the most ancient mathematical texts from Babylon and Egypt,
dating from over a thousand years earlier. One of the simplest proofs comes from
ancient China, and probably dates from well before Pythagoras’ birth. It was Pythagoras,
though, who gave the theorem its definitive form, although it is not clear whether Pythagoras
himself definitively proved it or merely described it. Either way, it has become one of the
best-known of all mathematical theorems, and as many as 400 different proofs now exist,
some geometrical, some algebraic, some involving advanced differential equations, etc.

It soom became apparent, though, that non-integer solutions were also possible, so that an
isosceles triangle with sides 1, 1 and √2, for example, also has a right angle, as
the Babylonians had discovered centuries earlier. However, when Pythagoras’s student
Hippasus tried to calculate the value of √2, he found that it was not possible to express it as a
fraction, thereby indicating the potential existence of a whole new world of numbers, the
irrational numbers (numbers that can not be expressed as simple fractions of integers). This
discovery rather shattered the elegant mathematical world built up by Pythagoras and his
followers, and the existence of a number that could not be expressed as the ratio of two of
God’s creations (which is how they thought of the integers) jeopardized the cult’s entire
belief system.

Poor Hippasus was apparently drowned by the secretive Pythagoreans for broadcasting this
important discovery to the outside world. But the replacement of the idea of the divinity of
the integers by the richer concept of the continuum, was an essential development in
mathematics. It marked the real birth of Greek geometry, which deals with lines and planes
and angles, all of which are continuous and not discrete.

Among his other achievements in geometry, Pythagoras (or at least his followers, the
Pythagoreans) also realized that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right
angles (180°), and probably also the generalization which states that the sum of the interior
angles of a polygon with n sides is equal to (2n – 4) right angles, and that the sum of its
exterior angles equals 4 right angles. They were able to construct figures of a given area, and
to use simple geometrical algebra, for example to solve equations such as a(a – x) = x2 by
geometrical means.

The Pythagoreans also established the foundations of number theory, with their investigations
of triangular, square and also perfect numbers (numbers that are the sum of their divisors).
They discovered several new properties of square numbers, such as that the square of a
number n is equal to the sum of the first n odd numbers (e.g. 42 = 16 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7). They
also discovered at least the first pair of amicable numbers, 220 and 284 (amicable numbers
are pairs of numbers for which the sum of the divisors of one number equals the other
number, e.g. the proper
divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4,
5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55
and 110, of which the sum
is 284; and the proper
divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4,
71, and 142, of which the
sum is 220).

Music Theory
Pythagoras is also credited
with the discovery that the
Pythagoras is credited with the discovery of the ratios
intervals between
between harmonious musical tones
harmonious musical notes
always have whole number ratios. For instance, playing half a length of a guitar string gives
the same note as the open string, but an octave higher; a third of a length gives a different but
harmonious note; etc.

Non-whole number ratios, on the other hand, tend to give dissonant sounds. In this way,
Pythagoras described the first four overtones which create the common intervals which have
become the primary building blocks of musical harmony: the octave (1:1), the perfect fifth
(3:2), the perfect fourth (4:3) and the major third (5:4). The oldest way of tuning the 12-note
chromatic scale is known as Pythagorean tuning, and it is based on a stack of perfect fifths,
each tuned in the ratio 3:2.

The mystical Pythagoras was so excited by this discovery that he became convinced that the
whole universe was based on numbers, and that the planets and stars moved according to
mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes, and thus produced a kind of
symphony, the “Musical Universalis” or “Music of the Spheres”.

PLATO – THE ATHENIAN PHILOSOPHER

Biography: What was Plato Known for
Although usually remembered today as a
philosopher, Plato was also one of ancient
Greece’s most important patrons of
mathematics. Inspired by Pythagoras, he
founded his Academy in Athens in 387 BCE,
where he stressed mathematics as a way of
understanding more about reality. In particular,
he was convinced that geometry was the key to
unlocking the secrets of the universe. The sign
Plato (c.428-348 BCE)
above the Academy entrance read: “Let no-one
ignorant of geometry enter here”.

Plato played an important role in encouraging and inspiring Greek intellectuals

to study mathematics as well as philosophy. His Academy taught mathematics
as a branch of philosophy, as Pythagoras had done, and the first 10 years of the
15 year course at the Academy involved the study of science and mathematics,
including plane and solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics. Plato became
known as the “maker of mathematicians”, and his Academy boasted some of the
most prominent mathematicians of the ancient world, including Eudoxus,
Theaetetus and Archytas.

He demanded of his students accurate definitions, clearly stated assumptions,

and logical deductive proof, and he insisted that geometric proofs be
demonstrated with no aids other than a straight edge and a compass. Among
the many mathematical problems Plato posed for his students’ investigation
were the so-called Three Classical Problems (“squaring the circle”, “doubling the
cube” and “trisecting the angle”) and to some extent these problems have
become identified with Plato, although he was not the first to pose them.

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Platonic Solids
Plato the
mathematician is
perhaps best known
for his identification of
5 regular symmetrical
3-dimensional shapes,
which he maintained
were the basis for the
whole universe, and
which have become
known as the Platonic Solids

Platonic Solids: the tetrahedron (constructed of 4 regular triangles, and which

for Plato represented fire),  the octahedron (composed of 8 triangles,
representing air), the icosahedron (composed of 20 triangles, and representing
water), the cube (composed of 6 squares, and representing earth), and  the
dodecahedron (made up of 12 pentagons, which Plato obscurely described as
“the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven”).

The tetrahedron, cube and dodecahedron were probably familiar

to Pythagoras, and the octahedron and icosahedron were probably discovered
by Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. Furthermore, it fell to Euclid, half a
century later, to prove that these were the only possible convex regular
polyhedra. But they nevertheless became popularly known as the Platonic
Solids, and inspired mathematicians and geometers for many centuries to come.
For example, around 1600, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler devised an
ingenious system of nested Platonic solids and spheres to approximate quite
well the distances of the known planets from the Sun (although he was enough
of a scientist to abandon his elegant model when it proved to be not accurate
enough).