Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.
But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.
Recognized or not, I will be wondering if Pythagoras was actually the Edison of his time…
I have no doubt he discovered it independently and just knew better how to articulate its importance.
According to the article, the theorem was named for him out of respect for starting a school-society thing whose members in turn developed & popularized the theorem. So you should perhaps have at least some doubt