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About 2400 BCE the Greeks tried to construct a square that had the same area as a circle, using only a straightedge and compasses. They also tried to construct a cube having twice the volume of a given cube, with the same tools. The failure of these attempts led mathematicians to realise that the cube root of two and the square root of pi are both irrational. Pi is not only irrational, but also transcendental. This is an important difference because the cube root of two can be constructed by geometrical methods that are more complex than just straightedge and compasses, while pi can not be constructed by any geometrical method involving only a finite number of steps. It took more than two thousand years from the death of Hippocrates of Chios (not to be confused with Hippocrates the physician) before mathematicians began to get a real grip on irrational and transcendental numbers. As is so often the case in Mathematics and Science, the long search led to many, many other discoveries along the way.

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