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The identity of the person who introduced the symbol is somewhat ambiguous. It was used by the Welsh mathematician William Jones in 1706 (Palmariorum Matheseos), and it is possible that he used pi because it was the first [Greek] letter in periphery.


However, Jones credits John Machin for his equations involving pi, and so it is possible that Machin used pi before Jones. In fact, there may have been others: Willam Oughtred used pi and delta to represent the periphery and diameter in 1647.


But the use of pi did not really catch on until it was adoted by one of the most influential mathematician of all times: Leonhard Euler, in 1736.

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8y ago

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