Definition:Ludolphine Number/Historical Note

Historical Note on Ludolphine Number

Ludolph van Ceulen published a $20$-decimal approximation for pi in his $1596$ book Van den Circkel ("On the Circle").

He later expanding this result to $32$ decimal places, and finally to $35$ decimal places.

He did not live to see the $35$-decimal-place value published, but it was carved onto his tombstone in a churchyard in Leyden.

The church was subsequently rebuilt and his tomb was destroyed, but his epitaph had by then been recorded in a survey of Leyden. Hence his lifework was preserved.

He obtained his value by using Archimedes' technique, taking the number of sides of the inscribed and circumscribed polygons to be $2^{62}$.

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Sources

• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $3 \cdotp 14159 \, 26535 \, 89793 \, 23846 \, 26433 \, 83279 \, 50288 \, 41972 \ldots$
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $3 \cdotp 14159 \, 26535 \, 89793 \, 23846 \, 26433 \, 83279 \, 50288 \, 41971 \ldots$