Zacharias Dase

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Johann Martin Zacharias Dase (June 23, 1824, Hamburg - September 11, 1861, Hamburg) was a German mental calculator

The famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss investigated his abilities. He recommended that the Hamburg Academy of Sciences should allow Dase to do mathematical work on a full-time basis, but Dase died shortly thereafter.

Dase multiplied 79532853 × 93758479 in 54 seconds. He multiplied two 20-digit numbers in 6 minutes; two 40-digit numbers in 40 minutes; and two 100-digit numbers in 8 hours 45 minutes. Gauss commented that he thought that someone skilled in calculation could have done the 100 digit example in about half that time with pencil and paper.

In 1844, Dase calculated π to 200 decimal places in his head, from the Machin-like formula

\frac{\pi}{4} = \arctan \frac{1}{2} + \arctan \frac{1}{5} + \arctan \frac{1}{8}.

He also calculated a 7-digit logarithm table and extended a table of integer factorizations from 7,000,000 to 10,000,000.

[edit] External links

  • [1] - A New Yorker article on the computation of pi; contains a short discussion of Zacharias Dase.