Ludolph van Ceulen

Aubrey's Brief Lives


Obituaries Index


Ludolph van Keulen was first, by Profession, a fencing-master; but becoming deaf, he betook himself to the study of the mathematics wherein he became famous.

He wrote a learned book of the proportion of the diameter of a circle to the periphery: before which is his picture, and round about it in the compartment are swords and bucklers and halberds etc -- weapons: the reason whereof I understood not until Dr John Pell gave the aforesaid account, who had it from Sir Francis Godolphin, who had been his scholar as to fencing and boarded at his house.
From John Aubrey's Brief Lives. (Edited by R Barber, Boydell Press, 1982)