28 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



well, and was told that it was impossible " to give a correct 

 answer, because the exact ratio of the diameter of a circle 

 to its circumference had never been determined" ! This 

 absolutely true but very unpractical statement by the pro- 

 fessor, set the well-sinker to thinking ; he studied mathe- 

 matics after a fashion, and announced that he had discovered 

 that the circumference was exactly 3! times the length of 

 the diameter ! For this discovery (?) he was honored by 

 several medals of the first class, bestowed by Parisian 

 societies. 



Even as late as the year 1860, a Mr. James Smith of 

 Liverpool, took up this ratio 3^ to I, and published several 

 books and pamphlets in which he tried to argue for its 

 accuracy. He even sought to bring it before the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science. Professors 

 De Morgan and Whewell, and even the famous mathema- 

 tician, Sir William Rowan Hamilton, tried to convince 

 him of his error, but without success. Professor Whewell's 

 demonstration is so neat and so simple that I make no 

 apology for giving it here. It is in the form of a letter to 

 Mr. Smith : " You may do this : calculate the side of a 

 polygon of 24 sides inscribed in a circle. I think you are 

 mathematician enough to do this. You will find that if 

 the radius of the circle be one, the side of the polygon is 

 .264, etc. Now the arc which this side subtends is, accord- 

 ing to your proposition, -=.2604, and, therefore, the 



1 2 



chord is greater than its arc, which, you will allow, is 

 impossible." 



This must seem, even to a school-boy, to be unanswer- 

 able, but it did not faze Mr. Smith, and I doubt if even the 

 method which I have suggested previously, viz., that of 



