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Ludolphian number

Ludolphian number noun: synonym of pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen.

ludolphian number: synonym of pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen
Image: Ludolf van Ceulen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Ludolphian number (uncountable)

  1. (historical) Synonym of pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen
    • 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...1992 March 2, Richard Preston, “The Mountains of Pi”, in The New Yorker
    Synonyms:
    pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen

Synonyms of Ludolphian number

  • pi
  • particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen

Origin of Ludolphian number

From Ludolph van Ceulen, a German mathematician who improved on previous approximations of pi.

Questions about Ludolphian number

What does Ludolphian number mean?
Ludolphian number means synonym of pi, particularly the 35-decimal approximation discovered by Ludolph van Ceulen.
What part of speech is Ludolphian number?
Ludolphian number is a noun.

Words near Ludolphian number in the dictionary

  1. ludology
  2. Ludolph
  3. Ludolph's constant
  4. Ludolph's number
  5. Ludolphian
  6. Ludolphian number
  7. Ludolphine
  8. Ludolphs
  9. ludomania
  10. ludomusical
  11. ludomusicality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Ludolphian number (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Ludolphian number.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ludolphian_number. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.