Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean theorem is an original geometric proof of the Pythagorean theorem devised by James A. Garfield, who later became the twentieth President of the United States. Garfield published the proof in 1876 in the New-England Journal of Education while serving as a congressman from Ohio, several years before he became president in 1881. According to the historian of mathematics William Dunham, Garfield's proof is genuinely clever, and it is recorded as the 231st of 370 different proofs collected in the compendium The Pythagorean Proposition. Garfield remains the only President of the United States credited with an original contribution to mathematics.
Facts
StatementThe theorem is proved by computing the area of a trapezoid in two different ways. 1 Classification
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Source Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean theorem (Wikipedia)
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1. Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean theorem (Wikipedia)
The proof
The theorem is proved by computing the area of this trapezoid in two different ways.
Publication information
The proof appeared in print in the New-England Journal of Education (Vol. 3, No. 14, April 1, 1876).
In Branch: Geometry, Lead section
Garfield's proof of the Pythagorean theorem is an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem
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