Alexander Overwijk
Canadian math teacher
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Alexander Overwijk is a Canadian math teacher who went viral for his claim of being able to hand-draw a perfect circle.[1]
Career
Overwijk is the former head of the math department at Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa, Canada.[2] He is also a former basketball player and coach at Carleton University, and was inducted into the Lindsay, Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.[3]
Overwijk is known for his active and experimental teaching style.[3][4]
Viral fame
Beginning in 1996, to keep his class engaged, Overwijk would tell his students a story about being the "World Freehand Circle Drawing Champion." To further his claim, he would hand-draw a circle on the blackboard. In 2007, a video of Overwijk drawing a near-perfect circle for his class went viral on YouTube.[5][6] Although the original story was a fabrication, he hosted a real "World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship" as a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society following his viral fame.[7]
In 2012, Overwijk and his circle-drawing abilities were featured on The Today Show.[8] In 2018, a professor of the Department of Mathematics at Stockholm University found the drawing from the 2007 video to have a circularness of 99.7%.[9]