On this date (March 14), we celebrate a serendipitous concurrence of events: it’s Pi Day, and it’s Albert Einstein’s 132nd birthday.
The day of the irrational number, and the hyper-rational theoretical physicist… what could be more perfect?
We have the constant whose value is the ratio of any Euclidean plane circle’s circumference to its diameter – and that has inspired such blonde-joke-quality humor as “Pi r squared? But everybody knows pie are round!”
And we have the man whose last name has become synonymous with genius, and who gave us such witty jewels as “You don’t truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.”
A number that cannot be exactly represented in decimal form, and a scientist who understood more than almost anyone about the true nature of the universe, but who couldn’t grasp the concept of a comb…
Still, maybe Einstein is smart enough to tell me once and for all what the difference is between pie and cobbler… !