Math and Murder?
Myth: that Hippasus was killed for irrational numbers
Since the 1890s, writers and math teachers claim that the ancient Pythagoreans murdered their fellow cult member Hippasus for discovering irrationality in mathematics. Allegedly Hippasus realized that certain geometric lines are incommensurable, for example, that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its sides. And so, when they were out at sea, they hurled him overboard, to drown.
Versions of this story have been echoed by historians of mathematics, such as Morris Kline and Amir Alexander, and by bestselling writers such as Mario Livio and the famous physicist, Stephen Hawking.
To the contrary, I found that it just didn’t happen: ancient sources, in Greek and Latin, do not claim that the Pythagoreans murdered Hippasus.
Instead, seven centuries after Hippasus lived, the philosopher Iamblichus wrote that some people said that the revealer of incommensurability was hated and banished, while others said that he died at sea. Thus, a vague story about a guy dying at sea became a story about a murdering cult.
“An Irrational Murder at Sea,”
The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 16-28.
“The Cult of Pythagoras”
The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 201-216.
Other chapters about the deaths of mathematicians:
“The Death of Archimedes”
The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 43-58.
“Gauss, Galois, and the Golden Ratio”
The Cult of Pythagoras: Math and Myths (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 59-81.
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BIO
Alberto Martinez is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. As a professor at UT Austin, he investigates the history of science, especially Einstein and relativity theory, history of math, historical myths, and Giordano Bruno and Galileo. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
He also researches myths in political news media, The Eyes of Texas, and episodes in the history of money and corruption.
Now, he's finishing writing a novel about Albert Einstein.