Pi à la carte number
- County Posey (Indiana, USA), 1888. Dr. Edward Johnston Goodwin discovered the square of the circle. In his model, the ratio between diameter and circumference was five quarters four; that is, for him the pi number was 3.2. And it's over.
Since ancient times, mathematicians tried to calculate the surface of the circle using only the compass and the rule; with these instruments they wanted to make a square that had the same surface as the circle, the square of the circle. In 1882, mathematician Ferdinand von Lindemann definitively proved that it was impossible, that it made no sense.
After patenting his method in the United States and seven European countries, Goodwin presented to a representative of the Indiana General Boards the bill of “new mathematical truth”, “a contribution to education that will be used free of charge in the State of Indiana if it is officially approved in the 1897 legislature.” The Indiana House of Representatives unanimously approved the draft on 5 February that year, with 67 votes in favour and none against. Therefore, Archimedes was wrong and the value of Pi was not 3.14.
The project only needed the Senate yes to get through. But that day, by chance, there was Clarence Abiathar Waldo, head of the mathematics department at Purdue University, who came to a petition to expand the faculty budget. He concisely and concisely explained to the senators that this project was a nonsense. On 13 February, the newspaper Indianapolis News reported on the next session of the Senate: “A proposal was put on the table to legalize the formula of squaring the circle, in a joke atmosphere. The senators laughed at the project. The fun lasted half an hour.” And the project was paralyzed forever.
In 2009, the U.S. Congress declared March 14 as Pi Number Day, so the date would match the number. But if it were for Goodwin – and not for Waldor-, I would surely have chosen March 20 for that. In fact, many of the members of this congress, for example, categorically reject climate change, as if they had found the square of the circle.
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