Piet Hein (Denmark)
:
For the Dutch naval hero see Piet Hein (Netherlands).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.
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 Hein, the Dutch naval hero of the
16th century.
He is known to a wider public for his thousands of short,
aphoristic poems called
Grooks (
Gruk in Danish) and creations like the games of
Hex,
Tangloids, Morra, Tower, Polytaire,
TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the
Soma cube. He advocated the use of the
super ellipse 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 Super-egg.
A couple of example
Grooks from
Grooks, first published in
1966:
Mankind::Men, said the Devil,:are good to their brothers::they don't want to mend :their own ways, but each other's.
Double Doors:: Double doors are justified: because they're comfortably wide;: therefore, you only half undo 'em;: therefore, nothing can get through 'em.
* "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
*
Grooks, by Piet Hein, (1998) Borgens Forlag; ISBN 8741810791
*
Collected Grooks I, by Piet Hein Borgens Forlag; ISBN 8721018596
*
Collected Grooks II, by Piet Hein Borgens Forlag; ISBN 8721018618
*
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 9080775614
*
Piet Hein Homepage*
Notes on Piet Hein, including several sample grooks.
*
Superellipse (MathWorld)*
Grooks by Piet Hein
