In this article, two questions are posed: Just how reliable is the evidence concerning
Pythagoras’s mathematical studies, and can we reconstruct his contribution to mathematics?
All known fragments of evidence by fourth-century B.C. authors on Pythagoras’s mathematical
investigations are examined, and it is shown that all the discoveries they mentioned
belong to the sixth century B.C. The opinion that the Pythagoreans ascribed their own
discoveries to Pythagoras is