History of mathematical notation back to any school or period before that of the Ionian Greeks, but the subsequent history may be divided into periods, the distinctions between which are tolerably well marked. Greek mathematics, which originated with the study of geometry, tended from its commencement to be deductive and scientific. Since the fourth century AD, Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of
Fermat's right triangle theorem Fermat's right triangle theorem Fermat's right triangle theorem is a non-existence proof in number theory, the only complete proof left by Pierre de Fermat. It has several equivalent formulations: An immediate consequence of the last of these formulations is that Fermat's last theorem is true for the exponent formula_3 and hence for any multiple of 4. In 1225, Fibonacci was challenged to find a construction for triples of square numbers that are equally spaced from each other, forming an arithmetic progression, and for the spacing between these numbers, which he called a congruum. One way of describing Fibonacci's solution is