Garfield, James (1831 - 1881)

James Abram Garfield was the 20th President of the United States of America. While not a mathematician he is included here because in 1876 while a Congressman he was credited with finding an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. The proof is interesting in that unlike many proofs his proof did not use the squares of sides of a triangle, instead it uses a pair of identical triangles of sides a, b, and c along with an isosceles triangle with legs of length c to create a trapezoid.

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	Date: 5/22/1986 Location: Chicago, IL, USA
	Date: 5/22/1986 Location: Chicago, IL, USA