Piet Hein (December 16, 1905 – April 17, 1996) was a Danish scientist, mathematician, inventor, author, and poet, often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym "Kumbel" meaning "tombstone". His short poems, gruks (or grooks), first started to appear in the daily newspaper "Politiken" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell".[1]
Biography
Piet Hein bust located in
Farum
He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Copenhagen (later to become the Niels Bohr Institute), and Technical University of Denmark. Yale awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1972. He died in his home on Funen, Denmark in 1996.
He was a direct descendant of Piet Pieterszoon Hein, the Dutch naval hero of the 17th century.
Work
Piet Hein's super-egg in brass
Piet Hein, who, in his own words, "played mental ping-pong" with Albert Einstein in the inter-War period, found himself confronted with a dilemma when the Germans occupied Denmark. He felt that he had three choices: Do nothing, flee to "neutral" Sweden or join the Resistance. As he explained in 1968, "Sweden was out because I am not Swedish, but Danish. I could not remain at home because, if I had, every knock at the door would have send shivers up my spine. So, I joined the Resistance."
Taking as his first weapon the instrument with which he was most familiar: the pen, he wrote and had published his first "grook" [gruk in Danish]. It passed the censors who did not grasp its real meaning.
- CONSOLATION GROOK
- Losing one glove
- is certainly painful,
- but nothing
- compared to the pain,
- of losing one,
- throwing away the other,
- and finding
- the first one again.
The Danes, however, understood its import and soon it was found as graffiti all around the country. There was something worse than the loss of freedom: It was collaboration followed by liberation. And Denmark got the message.
After Liberation, Scandinavian architects, tired of square buildings but cognizant that circular buildings were impractical, asked Piet Hein for a solution. Applying his mathematical prowess to the problem, Piet Hein created the superellipse which became the hallmark of modern Scandinavian architecture.
In addition to the thousands of grooks he wrote, Piet Hein devised the games of Hex, Tangloids, Morra, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the Soma cube. He advocated the use of the superellipse curve in city planning, furniture making and other realms. He also invented a perpetual calendar called the Astro Calendar and marketed housewares based on the superellipse and Superegg.
Bibliography
- Grooks – 20 volumes, originally published between 1940 and 1963, all currently out-of-print
Notes
- ^ piethein.com "For a long time they appeared under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. Here is the reason why: Piet is the Dutch form of the name Peter or Petrus, which means rock, stone, and Hein is a way of spelling ‘hen’, the old Danish word for a whetstone. ‘Kumbel’, or ‘kumbl’ as it strictly speaking should be written, also means stone, though more a grave monument. In other words, Piet Hein, or Stone Stone can, in a way, be translated by Kumbel Kumbel. He originally wrote the second word with two Ls, also later the signature became just Kumbel – the name he is at least as well known by as his own."
References
- Gardner, Martin: Piet Hein's Superellipse. - in Gardner, Martin: Mathematical Carnival. A New Round-Up of Tantalizers and Puzzles from Scientific American. New York: Vintage, 1977, pp. 240-254.
- Johan Gielis: Inventing the circle. The geometry of nature. - Antwerpen : Geniaal Press, 2003. - ISBN 90-807756-1-4
- "A Poet with a Slide Rule: Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science," by Jim Hicks, Life Magazine, Vol. 61 No. 16, 10/14/66, pp.55-66
See also
External links
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