Ludolphian number

English thumb|right|Van Ceulen's De Circulo & Adscriptis Liber Etymology From Ludolph van Ceulen, a German mathematician who improved on previous approximations of pi. Noun - en mathematics chiefly _ historical en pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen en March 2 1992 Richard Preston The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/03/02/the-mountains-of-pi The Mountains of Pi Pi... came to be called the Ludolphian number, after Ludolph van Ceulen, a German mathematician who approximated it to thirty-five decimal places... a calculation that took Ludolph most of his life to accomplish, and gave him such satisfaction that he had the digits engraved on his tombstone... the stone vanished, possibly to be turned into a sidewalk slab. Somewhere in Leiden, people may be walking over Ludolph's digits. https://web.archive.org/web/20260907201851/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/03/02/the-mountains-of-pi 7 September 2026