Pythagorean Triples, Complex Numbers, Abelian Groups and Prime Numbers

Abstract: It is well-known that pythagorean triples can be represented by points of the unit circle with rational coordinates. These points form an abelian group, and we describe its structure. This structural description yields, almost immediately, an enumeration of the normalized pythagorean triples with a given hypotenuse, and also to an effective method for producing all such triples. This effective method seems to be new. This paper is intended for the general mathematical audience, including undergraduate mathematics students, and therefore it contains plenty of background material, some history and several examples and exercises.