# MacTutor’s public biography stresses legendary layers around the name

Date: 1999

## The fact

St Andrews MacTutor is a completed public-history-of-maths page that marks late sources. The dated carrier is that URL. Honesty about legend is an access path.

## Context

A university history page is not Iamblichus, and not a birth certificate.

[Pythagoras](/people/pythagoras) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official encyclopedia, Loeb, or heritage pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: MacTutor — Pythagoras of Samos (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pythagoras/; University of St Andrews).

## Significance

MacTutor is a scholarly access path, not a Croton archive.

MacTutor is a scholarly access path, not a Croton archive.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Pythagoras: https://factrail.ai/people/pythagoras

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pythagoras/
- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/py-mactutor-honesty