Garfield's Proof
The twentieth president of the United States gave the following proof to the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this proof five years before he become President. He hit upon this proof in 1876 during a mathematics discussion with some of the members of Congress. It was later published in the New England Journal of Education.. The proof depends on calculating the area of a right trapezoid two different ways. The first way is by using the area formula of a trapezoid and the second is by summing up the areas of the three right triangles that can be constructed in the trapezoid. He used the following trapezoid in developing his proof.