Ludolph van Ceulen (nonfiction)
Ludolph van Ceulen (German: [fan ˈkɔʏlən], Dutch: [vɑŋˈkøːlə(n)]; 28 January 1540 – 31 December 1610) was a German-Dutch mathematician from Hildesheim. He emigrated to the Netherlands.
Van Ceulen moved to Delft to teach fencing and mathematics and in 1594 opened a fencing school in Leiden. In 1600 he was appointed the first professor of mathematics at the Engineering School, Duytsche Mathematique,
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 seventeen hundred years earlier. He published a 20-decimal value in his 1596 book Van den Circkel ("On the Circle"), which was published before he moved to Leiden, and he later expanded this to 35 decimals.
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External links
- Ludolph van Ceulen @ Wikipedia