The Book Pythagoras – His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe by Kitty Ferguson is far more than a biography of Pythagoras and his followers. This book traces the influence that Pythagoras has had on important thinkers throughout the last 2,500 years ranging from Plato to Bertrand Russell via Copernicus and Kepler.

From Pythagoras came the recognition that numbers are a pathway to an understanding of the deepest mysteries of a universe that on some profound level makes perfect sense and is all of a piece.

Another interesting fact is that the Pythagorean Theorem relating to the three sides of a right-angled triangle, which is the one thing most people associate with him, is inaccurately attributed. Archaeologists have found the theorem on tablets in Mesopotamia dating from the first half of the second millennium BC, a thousand years before Pythagoras was Born.

Where he was born is open to uncertainty too. Most people believe he was born on Samos, but it might be he was born in Asia Minor, no one knows for sure. What is certain is that he had a huge influence on science through the centuries as this book conveys to its reader.