Emma Haruka Iwao is a Japanesecomputer scientist at Google. In 2019 Haruka Iwao calculated the world's most accurate value of pi (π). Her calculation reached 31.4 trillion digits. This was much longer than the past record of 22 trillion digits.[3][4][5][6][7]
Early life and education
As a child, Iwao became interested in pi.[3] She was inspired by Japanese mathematicians, including Yasumasa Kanada.[8] She studied computer science at the University of Tsukuba. Daisuke Takahashi taught her there.[9][10] She won the Dean's Award for Excellence in 2008, before starting graduate studies in computing. Her master's dissertation was about high performance computer systems.[9] After graduating, Iwao worked as a software engineer for Panasonic, GREE and Red Hat.[10]
Career
Iwao joined Google as a Cloud Developer Advocate in 2015.[3] She worked for Google in Tokyo and then moved to Seattle in 2019.[2] Iwao does training in how to use the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). She also helps application developers.[11][12][13][14] She works to make cloud computing easier for everyone to use. She makes online demos and teaching materials.[15]
In March 2019 Iwao calculated the value of pi to 31.4 trillion digits, using 170 Terabytes (TB) of data.[3][8][16][17][1][18] The calculation used a multithreaded program called y-cruncher. It ran on more than 25 machines for 121 days.[3][19][15]