Squaring the circle: new advances! | Tangente

A problem dating back to antiquity -----------------------------------------

According to Plutarch, Anaxagoras was the first to state the problem, in the 5^th century BCE: how can we use straightedge and compass to construct, in a finite number of steps, a square with the same area as a given disk? The question is easy to understand, but the challenge was formidable. It confounded mathematicians for centuries. Amateurs also embarked on the adventure, sometimes losing their sanity in the process—to such an extent that, from the 18^th century onward, learned societies declared that they would no longer trouble themselves to answer "circle-squarers" of every stripe! Some highly ingenious approximate constructions have been proposed (see Le Cercle, Bibliothèque Tangente 36, 2009).

π is transcendental ------------------