Teens Uncover New Proof for 2,000-Year-Old Mathematical Theorem.
Two high school seniors from New Orleans have claimed to have proven Pythagoras's theorem using trigonometry, which academics have thought to be impossible for two millennia. Calcea Johnson and Ne'Kiya Jackson presented their findings at the American Mathematical Society's semi-annual meeting in Georgia and were encouraged to submit their work to a peer-reviewed journal. The pair's proof is based on a fundamental result in trigonometry, the Law of Sines, and is independent of the Pythagorean trig identity sin2x+cos2x=1.