 Hippasus originates the early Pythagorean tradition of scientific and mathematical analysis of music, which reaches its culmination in Archytas a century later. The correspondence between the central musical concords of the octave, fifth, and fourth and the whole number ratios 2 : 1, 3 : 2 and 4 : 3 is reflected in the acusmata (Iamblichus, VP 82) and was thus probably already known by Pythagoras. This correspondence was central to Philolaus’ conception of the cosmos (Fr. 6a). Although the later tradition tried to assign the discovery to Pythagoras himself (Iamblichus, VP 115), the method described in the story would not in fact have worked (Burkert 1972a, 375–376). Hippasus is the first person to whom is assigned an experiment demonstrating these correspondences that is scientifically possible. Aristoxenus (Fr. 90 Wehrli = DK I 109. 31 ff.) reports that Hippasus prepared four bronze disks of equal diameters, whose thicknesses were in the given ratios, and it is true that, if free hanging disks of equal diameter are struck, the sound produced by, e.g., a disk half as thick as another will be an octave apart from the sound produced by the other disk (Burkert 1972a, 377). Hippasus, thus, may be the first person to devise an experiment to show that a physical law can be expressed mathematically (Zhmud 2012a, 310).