Emma Haruka Iwao (born April 21, 1984) is a Japanese

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and cloud developer advocate at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. In 2019 Haruka Iwao calculated the then world record for most accurate value of pi (π); which included 31.4 trillion digits, exceeding the previous record of 22 trillion. This record was surpassed in 2020 by Timothy Mullican who calculated 50 trillion digits, but she reclaimed the record in 2022 with 100 trillion digits. The record was surpassed by a computer storage company in 2024, reaching roughly 105 trillion digits. She identifies as

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

Early life and education

As a child, Iwao became interested in pi. She was inspired by Japanese mathematicians, including

Yasumasa Kanada was a Japanese computer scientist most known for his numerous world records over the past three decades for calculating digits of . He set the record 11 of the past 21 times. Career Kanada was a professor in the Department of Information S ...

. She studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of Tsukuba is a List of national universities in Japan, national research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. The university has 28 college clusters and schools with around 16,500 students (as of 2014). The main Tsukuba ca ...

, where she was taught by

Daisuke Takahashi is a retired Japanese figure skater ( men's singles and ice dance) and ice show producer. As a singles skater, he is the 2010 Olympic bronze medalist, the 2010 World champion, the 2012–13 Grand Prix Final champion, a two-time (2008, 2011) ...

. She was awarded the Dean's Award for Excellence in 2008, before starting graduate studies in computing. Her master's thesis considered high performance computer systems. After graduating, Iwao took on several software engineering positions, working on site reliability for

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

, GREE and

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

Career

Iwao joined

as a Cloud Developer Advocate in 2015. She originally worked for Google in Tokyo, before moving to

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

in 2019. Iwao offers training in the use of the

Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, Computer data storage, data storage, Data analysis, data analytics, and machine learnin ...

(GCP), as well as supporting application developers. She works to make

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

accessible for everyone, creating online demos and teaching materials. In March 2019 Iwao calculated the value of pi to 31,415,926,535,897 digits (equal to ), using 170

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

s (TB) of data. The calculation used a multithreaded program called

y-cruncher y-cruncher is a computer program for the calculation of some mathematical constant with theoretical accuracy limited only by computing time and available storage space. It was originally developed to calculate the Euler-Mascheroni constant ; the ...

using over 25 machines for 121 days. In March 2022 she extended the world record to 100 trillion digits of pi.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iwao, Emma Haruka Japanese women mathematicians Japanese women computer scientists World record holders Living people 1984 births University of Tsukuba alumni Japanese LGBTQ scientists Queer women Queer scientists Japanese emigrants to the United States Google employees Pi-related people Scientists from Osaka Prefecture

Early life and education

Career

See also

References