On 30 Apr 2008 at 18:53, Bernie Cosell wrote:
Pi shows up a lot in geometry. I was wondering when "we" (ahem) realized that it was just one underlying constant.
Much thanks for the replies. I knew that Archimedes knew a lot about pi, but I didn't realize just how far he had gotten. So it *is* likely that he _did_ know that there was this single, strange and magical constant that underlay lots of things in geometry, which is what I was curious about. Of course, it'd be nearly two millennia before we actually proved that Pi was irrational (and another hundred years to prove it was transcendental). But that's a different matter.... :o) /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--