By Roberta Attanasio Pythagoras—a cloak-wearing mystical leader with a handsome beard—lived about 2,500 year ago in a community that cherished numbers. He was a native of the Aegean Island of Samos, but later in his life migrated westward and founded a school in Kroton (now Crotone) in South Italy. The school was called the “Semicircle of Pythagoras” and followed a code of secrecy. It was a cradle of mathematical research, but it had also an ascetic and religious character. Notably, Pythagoras’ philosophical views influenced both Plato and Aristotle. Although his famous theorem about right-angled triangles was likely developed by the Babylonians, Pythagoras is considered the first mathematician and a philosophical…