Every year on March 14, science enthusiasts celebrate Pi Day and the International Day of Mathematics. This mathematical holiday, which celebrates the constant Pi (π) describing the ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter, was initiated in 1988 by physicist and artist Larry Shaw.
Marking this important date, Dr. Mladen Zekić will give an engaging lecture for interested visitors titled Squaring the Circle. Squaring the circle is an ancient mathematical problem from the time of the ancient Greeks. Its formulation states: “Using only a straightedge and a compass, construct a square whose area is equal to the area of a given circle.” It is one of the most famous and influential problems in the history of mathematics and remained unsolved for more than two thousand years. Solving it required the development of algebra and mathematical analysis—fields of mathematics that were once entirely new. Only in the 19th century, thanks to these developments, was it finally proven that squaring the circle is impossible.
Join us and, through Dr. Zekić’s story, discover why it is an impossible mission to draw something that at first glance seems so simple, and how this impossibility inspired extraordinary progress in science.