Piet Hein was born in Copenhagen and is celebrated for his contributions in both art and science. The son of an engineer and an ophthalmologist, he began his education in 1924 at the University of Copenhagen, studying philosophy, but soon left to study art at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Ever taciturn and curious, he returned again to Copenhagen to study theoretical physics. This seemingly meandering trajectory gave his design approach a rich, holistic flair and he went on to become a successful mathematician, inventor, designer and poet.
Hein first garnered attention for his _gruk_s—epigrammatic poems about the philosophy and art of daily living, which were published in the newspaper Politiken during World War II, under the pseudonym Kumbel (“tombstone”) as a form of radical resistance. Over 20 volumes of his gruks have been published and Hein translated them to both English and Esperanto, reflecting the idealistic, global ethos he brought to all of his work. Hein even served as the president of the Danish Branch of the World Movement for World Federal Government in 1948—a gathering of intellectuals working together to solve global issues, and was also on the committee of similarly minded organizations such as Open Door International, Humanistic Union and The League for Tolerance.
Perhaps Hein’s most lasting and influential work was his invention of the superellipse in 1959, originally conceived of to solve a traffic problem in Stockholm’s Stergel’s Square. A manifestation of Hein’s search for the ideal physical form, the superellipse was a mathematical intermediary between a circle and a square, colorfully described by Hein as a “relief from the straitjacket of the simpler curves of first and second powers, the straight line and the conic." Hein’s superellipse was adapted to other urban planning projects around the world and became a cornerstone of Scandinavian industrial design. Danish manufacturer Fritz Hansen commissioned tables from Piet Hein and fellow designer Bruno Mathsson in 1964, based on his superellipse and made to complement Arne Jacobsen’s earlier Ant and Series 7 chairs. He also designed a silver Superegg box (1966) for Georg Jensen and his designs continue to be produced and adapted into furniture, lighting and home décor. Intent on making his mark in a diverse range of fields, Hein is also famous for inventing various board games, most notably, Hex (1942), the complex mathematical theories of which are still today applied to game theory and computer heuristics.
A true Universalist, Hein was awarded the Alexander Graham Bell Prize (1968), the Danish ID Prize (1971) and an honorary doctorate from Yale University (1972). Hein’s contributions to art and science continue to be influential and he is remembered for his adventurous, innovative integration of design, geometry and poetry. Piet Hein died in 1996 in his native Denmark.
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