Dymaxion Man
I don’t often write about things I haven’t finished reading, but this New Yorker profile of Buckminster Fuller included a nugget I just couldn’t help but share: “Following this string of disappointments, Fuller might have decided that his “experiment” had run its course. Instead, he kept right on going. Turning his attention to mathematics, he concluded that the Cartesian coördinate system had got things all wrong and invented his own system, which he called Synergetic Geometry. Synergetic Geometry was based on sixty-degree (rather than ninety-degree) angles, took the tetrahedron to be the basic building block of the universe, and avoided the use of pi, a number that Fuller found deeply distasteful.” (Emphasis mine.)
He found pi “deeply distasteful” … Amazing.