Who popularized the use of the symbol of Pi?
Answer Hi! Happy to help! It was popularized by Leonhard Euler, when he adopted the symbol in 1737. By this time, Euler was already a fairly prominent mathematician, serving as head of the mathematics department at the Academy at St. Petersburg. As far as modern historians know, the symbol was first used for that purpose in print in 1706, by Welsh mathematician called William Jones. Prior to that, the symbol for pi was used for the circumference of a circle, not for the (constant) ratio of that circumference to the circle’s diameter. Before the 18th century, it was called Archimedes’ Constant, since the Greek scientist Archimedes (around 250BC) proposed a method for calculating it, and used his method to find that pi is between 3.1408 and 3.1428. Pi is the first letter in the Greek words for ‘periphery’ (periphereia) or ‘measure around’ (perimetron). There! That’s probably more information than you needed! I got most of it from Wikipedia, starting at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histor
