The scholar and the fencing master: the exchanges between Joseph Justus Scaliger and Ludolph van Ceulen on the circle quadrature (1594--1596) (Q990260)

Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540--1609) was a famous classicist and humanist at the University of Leiden. In 1594 he published his \textit{Cyclometrica Elementa} (Elements of circle measurement) in Latin and Greek. The work made a big impression on many scholars, but some experts realized that Scaliger's work was mathematically incorrect. Three such experts were François Viète, Adriaan von Roomen, and Ludolph van Ceulen. In 1596 van Ceulen published a book \textit{Vanden Circkel} with several questions of a ``highly learned man''. Hogendijk studies the proofs, arguments, and propositions of the two books, compares them and finds serious errors in the \textit{Cyclometrica Elementa}. Especially nearly all propositions of Chapter 21 in \textit{Vanden Circkel} could be interpreted as criticisms of Scaliger's work. But who was the ``highly learned man''? Hogendijk is convinced that Ludolph van Ceulen had discovered the incorrect theorems in Scaliger's Cyclometrica himself, and did not want to cite the name due to politeness. The two scientists both lived in the small city of Leiden, exchanged letters and probably knew one another. Van Ceulen was arithmetic teacher and fencing master. Hence his social status was much lower, and he tried to be polite in spite of his criticism. Furthermore the approaches to mathematics of the two scientists were very different. Van Ceulen was a mathematical practitioner and teacher with phenomenal calculating abilities. Scaliger was an expert in Greek mathematics and a scholar engaged in theory, but did not teach mathematics to students. The article ends with a Dutch transcription and English translation of important parts of Chapter 21 of \textit{Vanden Circkel}.