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Revision as of 17:35, 21 May 2002 by 24.188.241.171 (talk) (Please help with this disambiguation (?))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Piet Hein was the name of a Danish poet & designer and a Dutch naval commander and folk hero.
Piet Hein was born December 16, 1905, in Copenhagen, Denmark and he died April 18, 1996 in his home on Funen, Denmark. He was a scientist, mathematician, inventor, and author, often writing under the pseudonym "Kumbel". 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 is known to a wider public for his thousands of short, aphoristic poems called Grooks and creations like the game of Hex and the Soma cube. In city planning, furniture making and other realms, he exploited the Super ellipse curve described by the French mathematician Gabriel_Lamé.
Piet Hein 1577-1629 (Pieter Pieterszoon Hein or Heyn) had a colorful maritime career. He was known for his successful naval warfare against Spain during the protracted Dutch war for independence from Spain. At one point in the conflict, the Spanish held him prisoner as a galley-slave for four years. Before becoming a Dutch vice-admiral in 1623, he was a merchant captain with the Dutch West India Company. His major battles against the Spaniards were near Cuba and off the eastern Brazilian coast near Salvador, and the Bahia region. He became Lieutenant-Admiral in 1629 and died the same year fighting the Dunkirk pirates.