The Discovery of Pi

by Adam

Ahmes	Throughout History several people have been involved in the discovery and development of the mathematical equation known as Pi. Different people will name off the person they believe found Pi but the truth is that it was discovered by many people throughout history and refined down to what it is today. Although this is a brief history it will explain how Pi came to be what it is today. The earliest form of Pi was recorded by the Eygptian Scribe Ahmes. His discovery was made in 1650 B.C.E. He said "Cut off 1/9 of a diameter and construct a square upon the remainder; this has the same area as the circle". When he discovered this he placed Pi to 3.16049. His calculation was less than one percent off the actually ratio and was a precursor to the major discoveries that were still bound to take place. Two of the first Greeks to discover Pi were Antiphon and Bryson of Heraclea. They tried finding the area of a circle using a new idea called the Principle of Exhaustion. It states that if you take a hexagon and double its sides and then double them again and keep doubling them sooner or later the hexagon will be a circle. Although this didn't lead to a discovery of Pi, it aided those who would follow.
Archimedes was one of the people to follow in Antiphon and Bryson's footsteps. When Archimedes started studying circles, he used the exhaustion theory to aid him. The only difference is that he focused his attention on the perimeters of the circles instead of the areas. Using this new theory, he placed Pi to 3.1419. This is less than three ten-thousandths from the true value. The Chinese also discovered Pi in the 12th century B.C.E. The Chinese mathematician Liu Hui found that Pi lies between 3.141024 and 3.142704. Later on he placed it to 3.1416. One person who is often associated with Pi is Leonardo de Pisa. He is most commonly known by his nickname Fibonacci. In 1220 C.E. He calculated Pi was equal to 3.1418. This was only .0001 more accurate than Archimedes placement and had obviously not been influenced by Chinese equations. In 1882, Ferdinand Lindermann, a German mathematician, was the first to prove that Pi is a transcendental number. That means that it is not the root of any polynomial equation with rational coefficients. This proved it is impossible to square a circle.	Archimedes
Leonhard Euler	The use of the Pi symbol did not become popular until its adoption by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737. Which is surprising because this symbol was used years before Euler adopted it.
Several people believe that Pi was used in the Christian Bible. It is said that in the sixth century, Pi was used by christians to erect an altar in the temple of Solomon. Although this belief has been backed up by some people, others have tried to use it to prove that the Christian Bible is false. There also exists a third group who thinks that this proves that Pi's true value is 3, not 3.14. Click to read about those people.
	Ever since its discovery Pi has attracted a group of people whose life work is to find out the digits of Pi. Although Pi has been calculated to more decimal points than anyone could ever use, there are still people who are obsessed with learning more about Pi. These people are called digit hunters. One of the first digit hunters was Ludolf van Ceulen. His calculations led to the placement of Pi to 35 digits. It is rumored that he had the digit engraved on his tombstone. Although he is famous for his work, it soon became obsolete, and now that computers are being used to calculate Pi, we will drift further and further away from his discovery. Pi has just been placed to one million digits and some wonder if this will be enough. The truth is that as long as there are people out there who dedicate their life work to the extension of Pi, our knowledge of it will grow larger.