ORIGINS OF " PI "

ORIGINS OF " PI "

Throughout history, there have been many mathematicians of different civilizations who have tried to establish the value of "pi", some with more fortune than others.

The earliest references we have a record of date back almost 2000 years BC.

A clay table from ancient Babylon, between 1900 and 1600 BC. C . , grants "pi" a value of 3,125 .

And the Egyptian papyrus of Ahmes, a mathematical document of great historical importance (which is preserved in the British Museum in London), sets it at 3.16: this papyrus is from 1,650 a. C. , but it was copied at the time from an even older document, from 1,850 BC. C.

In fact, there are Egyptologists who even believe that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built centuries earlier using the proportions of "pi", although other experts in Ancient Egypt do not share that opinion.

Sumerians, Chinese and Indians, among others, also made their versions of depiction of "pi", and even the Bible gave it a value of 3 in one of the Old Testament passages.

However, it was the Greek mathematician Archimedes who carried out the advancement of creating the first known algorithm to decipher "pi· in 250 a. C.

Archimedes used polygons to prove that "pi" had a minimum value of 3 10/71 and a maximum value of 3 1/7, and his discovery was the main exponent of "pi" for the next thousand years.

Centuries later, Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi was the first to discover the first 7 decimals of "pi", setting the number at 3.1415926 in 480 d. C.

A millennium later, in 1,400, Indian mathematician Madhava of Sangamagram surpassed this feat by deciphering 10 decimals, developing the power series currently known as the Leibniz series..

 

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