In Good Company - Pythagoras

Who doesn't know of the Pythagorean theorem? I think we all learned that little tidbit in grade school didn't we? Pythagoras the Samian came up with that little ditty some two thousand, five hundred years ago, that's right two and a half millenniums have passed since this rather brilliant mathematician sat down and figured out "The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides". Simple to say, but a leap in logic that is astronomical. He is the father of numbers, a true greek scholar. Master of the arts and the sciences.

Not much is truly known about the man, much of his history is lost to mythological reverence. Not only was he a scholar but he also founded a religion and as we all know the history of religious leaders is often sanitized over time. It is known that he was born on the Greek isle of Samos off the coast of Asia Minor, and he trained in Egypt. His religion was the first to form monastic living, where his students were not allowed personal possessions and submitted to a strict diet.

Fitz Hugh Ludlow maintains in his The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean that Pythagoras partook of hasheesh eating beginning while he studied in Egypt. I am aware that this is not difinitive proof, and that the source is quite questionable, but it is reasonable to assume it is possible.