Yasumasa Kanada

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Yasumasa Kanada

Japanese mathematician who pioneered new computer methods for calculating the value of ? to unprecedented levels of precision. Prior to Kanada's work,? had been calculated to 2,037 places using computers while, calculating by hand, solving ? to 707 places had required 15 years of effort. In 1988 Kanada calculated the value of ? to over 200 million decimal places in six hours of "supercomputer" time. Since then, using other supercomputers, ? has been calculated to over 1 billion decimal places.

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