William Shanks

Infobox Scientist
name = William Shanks
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birth_date = birth date|1812|01|25
birth_place = Corsenside, County Durham, England
death_date = 1882, aged 70
death_place = Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham, England
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field = Amateur calculator, school owner
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William Shanks (January 25, 1812 – summer 1882, Houghton-le-Spring, Durham, England [GRO Register of Deaths: JUN 1882 10a 252 HOUGHTON - William Shanks, aged 70] ) was a British amateur mathematician.

Shanks is famous for his calculation of "π" to 707 places, accomplished in the year 1873, which, however, was only correct up to the first 527 places. This error was highlighted in 1944 by Ferguson (using a mechanical desk calculator).

Shanks earned his living by owning a boarding school at Houghton-le-Spring, which left him enough time to spend on his hobby of calculating mathematical constants. His routine was as follows: he would calculate new digits all morning; and then he would spend all afternoon checking his morning's work. To calculate "π", Shanks used Machin's formula:: $frac\{pi\}\{4\}\; =\; 4\; arctan\; left(frac\{1\}\{5\}\; ight)\; -\; arctan\; left(frac\{1\}\{239\}\; ight)$

Shank's approximation was the longest expansion of "π" until the advent of the electronic digital computer about one century later.

Shanks also calculated "e" and the Euler-Mascheroni constant γ to many decimal places. He published a table of primes up to 60 000 and found the natural logarithms of 2, 3, 5 and 10 to 137 places.

Shanks died in Houghton-le-Spring in summer 1882, aged 70, and is buried in the local Hillside Cemetery. [ [http://www.houghton-hillside-cemetery.org.uk/names_hillside.html Houghton le Spring Hillside Cemetery ] ]

ee also

*section "Numerical approximations" of the article on π

References

External links

* [http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Shanks.html Shank's biography at St.Andrews]

Persondata
NAME=Shanks, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Amateur calculator, school owner
DATE OF BIRTH=1812-01-25
PLACE OF BIRTH=Corsenside, County Durham, England
DATE OF DEATH=1882
PLACE OF DEATH=Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham, England