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Mathematical historical stories
The origin of irrational numbers

In 500 BC, hippasus, a disciple of the Pythagorean school in ancient Greece, discovered an amazing fact: the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the length of one side (if the side length of a square is 1, the length of the diagonal is not a rational number). This incommensurability is different from the Pythagorean school's "everything is a number" (referring to rational numbers)

This development surprised and angered the leaders of this school, thinking that it would shake their dominant position in academic circles.

Furong was imprisoned and tortured in every way, and finally she was sent to the shipwreck and died.

What is the essence of incommensurability? For a long time, people have been arguing endlessly without a correct explanation. The ratio of two incommensurable degrees has always been considered unreasonable.

/kloc-Leonardo da Vinci, a famous Italian painter in the 0/5th century, called it an "irrational number", and Kepler, a German astronomer in the 0/7th century, called it an "indescribable number".

However, the truth cannot be submerged after all, and it is "unreasonable" for Bishop to obliterate the truth.

People named the incommensurable measure "irrational number" in memory of the respectable scholar Hibsos who devoted himself to truth-this is the origin of "irrational number".

At the same time, it also led to the first mathematical crisis.