History of π

The mathematical constant π = 3.14159... has been subject to extensive study since ancient history.

This page gives a historical account on the increasing human knowledge about its mathematical properties. Here the aim is not to focus on the precision of known numerical approximations. There are more specialized pages about

• the history of numerical approximations of π, which says more about the ongoing hunt for billions of decimal places of π
• the chronology of computations of π with an overview of "world records" concerning these computations.

History of π

Theory

• That the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is the same for all circles, and that it is slightly more than 3, was known to ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian and Greek geometers. The Indians and Greeks also knew that the area of a circle is πr^{2, where r is the radius.}

• Archimedes showed that the volume of a sphere is (4/3)πr^{3, where r is the radius, and that the surface area of a sphere is 4πr2, i.e., 4 times the area of the circle with the same radius.}

• The Indian mathematician and astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama in the 14th century found the following infinite series expansion of π:

${\frac {\pi }{4}}=1-{\frac {1}{3}}+{\frac {1}{5}}-{\frac {1}{7}}+\cdots \pm {\frac {1}{2n-1}}$

which is a realization of the power series expansion of the arctangent function.

• In the 18th century, Abraham de Moivre found that when a fair coin is tossed 1800 times, the probability that the number of heads is x is approximately

$C\exp \left({-(x-900)^{2} \over 900}\right)$

where C is a constant that de Moivre could compute by numerical means. (This normal distribution was introduced in the 1738 edition of de Moivre's book The Doctrine of Chances.) As the number of tosses grows, the approximation can be made as close as desired (but "900" would be replaced by a larger number). De Moivre's friend James Stirling later showed that this constant is

${1 \over {\sqrt {2\pi }}}.$

• In 1761, Johann Heinrich Lambert showed that π is an irrational number by showing that it has a generalized continued fraction that does not terminate.

• In 1882, Ferdinand von Lindemann proved that π is a transcendental number.

Computation

Main article: history of numerical approximations of π.

• The Egyptian scribe Ahmes wrote the oldest known text to give an approximate value for π, citing a Middle Kingdom papyrus, corresponding to a value of 256 divided by 81 or 3.160.

• As early as the 19th century BC, Babylonian mathematicians were using π = 25/8, which is within 0.528% of the exact value.

• By finding perimeters of circumscribed and inscribed regular polygons, Archimedes found that π is between 3 + 10/71 and 3 + 1/7.

• The Chinese mathematician Liu Hui computed π to 3.141014 (good to three decimal places) in AD 263 and suggested that 3.14 was a good approximation.

• The Indian mathematician and astronomer Aryabhata in the 5th century gave the approximation π = 62832/20000 = 3.1416, correct when rounded off to four decimal places.

• The Chinese mathematician and astronomer Zu Chongzhi computed π to be between 3.1415926 and 3.1415927 and gave two approximations of π, 355/113 and 22/7, in the 5th century.

• In the 14th century, the Indian mathematician and astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama gave the remainder term

${\frac {n^{2}+1}{4n^{3}+5n}}$

for the infinite series expansion of ${\frac {\pi }{4}}$ to find a rational approximation of π to 13 decimal places of accuracy when n = 75.

• The Persian Muslim mathematician and astronomer Ghyath ad-din Jamshid Kashani (1350-1439) correctly computed π to 9 digits in base 60, which is equivalent to 16 decimal digits in base 10 as

$\ 2\pi =6.2831853071795865$

which equates to

$\ \pi =3.14159265358979325.$

He achieved this level of accuracy by calculating the perimeter of a regular polygon with $\ 3.2^{18}$ sides.

• With the appearance of computers, a hunt on millions and billions of decimal places of π has started and is still ongoing. See history of numerical approximations of π for a detailed account.

History of the notation

The symbol "π" for Archimedes' constant was first introduced in 1706 by William Jones when he published A New Introduction to Mathematics, although the same symbol had been used earlier to indicate the circumference of a circle. The notation became standard after it was adopted by Leonhard Euler. In either case, 'π' is the first letter of περιφέρεια (periphereia, the Greek word for periphery) or περίμετρον (perimetron), meaning 'measure around' in Greek.

See also

• list of topics related to π
• history of numerical approximations of π
• chronology of computation of π

References and links

• A History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann
• Records in the calculation of pi
• Detailed chronology of record-breaking calculations. Retrieved October 22, 2005.
• The Life of Pi by Jonathan Borwein