- Ludolph van Ceulen
Ludolph van Ceulen (
28 January 1540 –31 December 1610 ) was a Germanmathematician fromHildesheim . Like manyGermans during the CatholicInquisition s, he emigrated to theNetherlands .Ceulen moved to
Delft to teach fencing andmathematics . In 1594 he opened a fencing school inLeiden . In 1600 he was appointed the first professor of mathematics atLeiden University . He died in Leiden.Calculating π
Ludolph van Ceulen spent a major part of his life calculating the numerical value of the mathematical constant π, using essentially the same methods as those employed by
Archimedes some two thousand years earlier. He published a 20-decimal value in his 1596 book "Van den Circkel" ("On the Circle"), later expanding this to 35 decimals. After his death, the "Ludolphine number",:3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...,
was engraved on his tombstone in Leiden. The tombstone was later lost but was restored in 2000.
External links
* Oomes, R. M. Th. E.; Tersteeg, J. J. T. M.; Top, J. "The epitaph of Ludolph van Ceulen." "Nieuw Arch. Wiskd. (5)" 1 (2000), no. 2. [http://www.math.rug.nl/~top/pi-dag/graf.pdf online] nl icon
* [http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Van_Ceulen.html MacTutor biography of van Ceulen]
* [http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~wiskonst/ruziesceulen/biovc.html Ludolph van Ceulen (1540-1610)] nl icon
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.