Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos, who lived around 570 to 495 BC, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism, whose political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and, through them, Western philosophy. Modern scholars agree that he travelled to Croton in southern Italy around 530 BC, where he founded a school whose initiates were allegedly sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. In antiquity he was credited with discoveries including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the theory of proportions and the sphericity of the Earth, and was reputedly the first man to call himself a philosopher, though historians debate how many of these were truly his own. The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, holding that every soul is immortal and enters a new body upon death. Following Croton's victory over Sybaris around 510 BC, his followers came into conflict with supporters of democracy and their meeting houses were burned; Pythagoras may have been killed in this persecution or escaped to Metapontum and died there. His teachings influenced Plato and, through a revival among first century BC Middle Platonists, Neopythagoreanism, and later scientists including Copernicus, Kepler and Newton.