EINSTEIN said the biggest mystery of the world was that it should be comprehensible at all. Nearly 25 centuries earlier, Pythagoras hit on much the same revelation, awestruck that the pleasing harmonies of the lyre should have their foundation in numbers. It was the dawn of the idea that we could make sense of the universe. This detailed biography of Pythagoras is an account both of the man and his legacy (that’s not just triangles). The story is a many-layered palimpsest that Ferguson expertly deciphers. How many of today’s thinkers will be so lauded in the 45th century?
The…
