Piet Hein (Denmark)

Infobox Person
name = Piet Hein


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caption = Piet Hein (Kumbel) in front of the H.C. Andersen statue in Copenhagen
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birth_date = birth date|1905|12|16
birth_place = Copenhagen, Denmark
death_date = death date and age|1996|04|17|1905|12|16
death_place = Funen, Denmark
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known_for = Puzzles, Poems
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Piet Hein (December 16, 1905 – April 17, 1996) was a Danish scientist, mathematician, inventor, author, and poet, often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym "Kumbel" meaning "tombstone". His short poems, "gruks" (or grooks), first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell."

Biography

He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen (later to become the Niels Bohr Institute), and Technical University of Denmark. Yale awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1972. He died in his home on Funen, Denmark in 1996.

He was a direct descendant of Piet Pieterszoon Hein, the Dutch naval hero of the 17th century.

Work

He is known to a wider public for his thousands of short, aphoristic poems called Grooks ("Gruk" in Danish) and creations like the games of Hex, Tangloids, Morra, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the Soma cube. He advocated the use of the super ellipse curve in city planning, furniture making and other realms. He also invented a perpetual calendar called the Astro Calendar and marketed housewares based on the Superellipse and Super-egg.

Bibliography

* "Grooks" – 20 volumes, originally published between 1940 and 1963, all currently out-of-print

References

* Gardner, Martin: "Piet Hein's Superellipse." - in Gardner, Martin: "Mathematical Carnival. A New Round-Up of Tantalizers and Puzzles from Scientific American". New York: Vintage, 1977, pp. 240-254.
* Johan Gielis: "Inventing the circle. The geometry of nature". - Antwerpen : Geniaal Press, 2003. - ISBN 90-807756-1-4
* "A Poet with a Slide Rule: Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science," by Jim Hicks, "Life Magazine", Vol. 61 No. 16, 10/14/66, pp.55-66

External links

* [http://www.piethein.com Piet Hein Homepage]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20050305223250/http://www.ctaz.com/~dmn1/hein.htm Notes on Piet Hein] , including several sample grooks.
* [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Superellipse.html Superellipse (MathWorld)]
* [http://chat.carleton.ca/~tcstewar/grooks/grooks.html Grooks by Piet Hein]

Persondata
NAME = Hein, Piet
ALTERNATIVE NAMES =
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Puzzle designer, mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH = 1905-12-16
PLACE OF BIRTH = Copenhagen, Denmark
DATE OF DEATH = 1996-04-17
PLACE OF DEATH = Funen, Denmark