The Legacy of Pythagoras

Part 1 of this series, "The Triangles of Samos", presents the viewer with the amazingly true tale of how ancient military architects, completely without the benefit of modern tunneling equipment, were able to dig an underground aqueduct starting from both sides and somehow meet in the middle. This tunnel on the island of Samos, over a kilometer long and bored deep below a mountain, is shown to the viewer as an object lesson in how the ancients of two or three millennia ago harnessed the knowledge of right triangles to improve the world around them.

In part 2, "Pythagoras et al", the viewer learns a bit more of the history of the Pythagorean Theorem, including the idea that its development was not due solely to Pythagoras. We get a taste of the personality cult surrounding Pythagoras and how the devotion of his disciples led to mathematical innovations that today we take for granted, including the existence of irrational numbers that Pythagoras' followers tried to suppress. "Pythagoras et al" also explores how more recent mathematicians expanded on the work of this great thinker.

In Part 3, "Challenging Pythagoras", the documentary takes a different turn. The viewer is introduced to the idea that the nearly sacred Pythagorean theorem may not always be applicable. This segment explores how the ancient fundamentals of geometry have had to be tweaked and rethought in order to fit with our changing knowledge of the world. Beginning with the 2200-year-old story of how Eratosthenes of Alexandria not only found out the world was round but also accurately calculated its circumference, we see how right triangles had to be bent, so to speak, to fit with a spherical world. For pre-modern mariners, it was a matter of life and death.