The Feynman Point

If you saw our video of words derived from numbers earlier this month, you’ll know that March 14 was Pi Day (or rather, the once-in-a-century Rounded-Up Pi Day), because when it’s written out numerically the date “3.14.16” forms the first few digits of pi.

Besides our mathematically-themed video, however, over on the HaggardHawks Twitter feed we marked Pi Day with this fairly remarkable fact:

The FEYNMAN POINT is a series of six consecutive 9s in the 762nd-767th decimal places of pi. #PiDay pic.twitter.com/5ZyAZQs66x

— HaggardHawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 14 March 2016

Now. We’re not mathematicians here at HaggardHawks, and frankly the very idea of discussing the irrationality of an approximation of the mathematical constant representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diametzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Only joking, mathematicians, we love you really. But even dusty, bookish old wordsmiths like us can find some interest in mathematics every so often, and the Feynman Point is one of those times. So we thought you might like to know a little bit more about the point behind The Point.

The “Feynman” of the Feynman Point is the American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. In a lifetime of achievement and accomplishment, Feynman did everything from helping develop the atomic bomb to assisting in the commission that investigated the Challenger disaster in 1986. He was also jointly awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics for his “fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics”, including his groundbreaking work on quantum path integral formulation challenging the existing notion of a unique quantum trajectory by replacing it with a functional integralzzzzzzzzzz…

Only joking, physicists, we love you as well. But long story short, Richard Feynman was a brilliant scientist—and he was also very interested in π.

According to the story, during a lecture at the California Institute of Technology, Feynman joked to his students that he would one day like to memorize pi up to the point, 762 decimal places in, that there are six consecutive nines. Why? Well, he wanted reach that particular repdigit and then state “...999999, and so on”, implying that the famously irrational π suddenly, 762 places in, becomes nothing more than an infinite chain of 9s.

Regrettably there’s little evidence that Feynman ever actually made that joke (and in fact the earliest account of it credits it to fellow scientist Douglas Hofstader), but it’s Feynman’s name that has ended up being attached to these six consecutive 9s, and its his name that has remained in place ever since.

Incidentally, another six consecutive 9s crop up in the 193,034th–193,039th decimal places of pi. Anyone fancy memorizing up to there? You could get your name in the dictionary if you do...