page_title: Ludolph van Ceulen
section_title: Calculating π
hierarchical_section_title: Ludolph van Ceulen / Calculating π
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ludolphi a Ceulen De circulo et adscriptis liber. In quo plurimorum polygonorum latera per irrationalium numerorum griphos, ... explicantur. ... Omnia è vernaculo latina fecit, &amp; annotationibus illustravit Willebrordus Snellius …. - Lugd. Batav.&#160;: apud Iodocum a Colster, 1619 (Lugd. Batau.&#160;: excudebat Georgius Abrahami á Marsce, 1619). - [8], 220, 54 p.&#160;: 1 ritratto&#160;; 4º .
context_page_description: Ludolph van Ceulen was a German-Dutch mathematician from Hildesheim. He emigrated to the Netherlands.
context_section_description: 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. 
  Van Ceulen's 35 digits is more than enough accuracy for any conceivable practical purpose. Even if a circle was perfect down to the atomic scale, the thermal vibrations of the molecules of ink would make most of those digits physically meaningless. Future attempts to calculate π to ever greater precision have been driven primarily by curiosity about the number itself.
caption: De circulo & adscriptis liber (1619)
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