Excerpt:
One of the major contributions Archimedes made to mathematics was his method for approximating the value of pi. It had long been recognized that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter was constant, and a number of approximations had been given up to that point in time by the Babylonians, Egyptians, and even the Chinese. There are some authors who claim that a biblical passage1 also implies an approximate value of 3 (and in fact there is an interesting story2 associated with that).