Shrum Professor of Science, Director CECM, Simon Fraser University
DATE: Wednesday, 17 September 1997, 3:30pm
DEPT: math
COLLOQUIUM
K9509 (SFU)
CECM
SPEAKER: Jonathan Michael Borwein, FRSC
SPONSOR: CECM

Pi and its computation:

ABSTRACT: Why Pi?
"The story of pi reflects the most seminal, the most
serious and sometimes the silliest aspects of
mathematics. A surprising amount of the most
important mathematics and a significant number of
the most important mathematicians have
contributed to its unfolding -- directly or otherwise.

Pi is one of the few concepts in mathematics whose
mention evokes a response of recognition and
interest in those not concerned professionally with
the subject. It has been a part of human culture and
the educated imagination for more than twenty five
hundred years.

The computation of Pi is virtually the only topic
from the most ancient stratum of mathematics that
is still of serious interest to modern mathematical
research. And to pursue this topic as it developed
throughout the millennia is to follow a thread
through the history of mathematics that winds
through geometry, analysis and special functions,
numerical analysis, algebra and number theory. It
offers a subject which provides mathematicians with
examples of many current mathematical techniques
as well as a palpable sense of their historical
development."

My talk will provide witness to many of these claims and will be
presented partly over the internet. Indeed, we will compute a hundred
billion digits of Pi during the lecture.