Mathematics Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
27 statements marked Debated.
Pythagoras, Birth Year570 BCE
Pythagoras, Mathematicians
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States 570 BCE
No contemporary record survives; c. 570 BCE is the commonly cited scholarly estimate, reconstructed from later, sometimes unreliable, biographical traditions.
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Pythagoras, Death Year495 BCE
Pythagoras, Mathematicians
Standing
Concerns Death Year
Currently States 495 BCE
No contemporary record survives; this is a commonly cited scholarly estimate, not a firm date.
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Pythagoras, BirthplaceSamos, an Ionian Greek island
Pythagoras, Mathematicians
Standing
Concerns Birthplace
Currently States Samos, an Ionian Greek island
Widely repeated in later sources but resting on tradition rather than a contemporary record.
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Pythagorean Theorem, Proof Year520 BCE
Pythagorean Theorem, Theorems
Standing
Concerns Proof Year
Currently States 520 BCE
The relationship was used empirically by Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians centuries earlier; whether Pythagoras personally, or a later member of his school, produced the first general proof is genuinely uncertain, since no writing by Pythagoras survives.
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Qin Jiushao, Birth Year1202
Qin Jiushao, Mathematicians
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States 1202
Sources give the birth year only approximately, circa 1202.
Source Qin Jiushao (Wikipedia)
Series, Origin Year1668
Series, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1668
One of two specific candidate years recorded for series, both from the same Wikipedia History of the theory of infinite series section: 1668 is the first attestation of the core convergence and divergence terminology (James Gregory); 1821 (recorded alongside this fact) is Cauchy's Cours d'Analyse, widely credited with starting the rigorous modern theory. Ancient Greek summation methods, such as Archimedes' method for areas, predate both but carry no specific year in the source. No single year is treated as definitive.
Source Series, Mathematics (Wikipedia)
Series, Origin Year1821
Series, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1821
Second of two recorded candidate years for series; see the 1668 entry for the fuller note. Cauchy's 1821 Cours d'Analyse begins the rigorous modern theory of convergence tests.
Source Series, Mathematics (Wikipedia)