Pi Day: 12 numbers that are cooler than pi

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2 years ago

March 17, 2023

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Here at Live Science, we love numbers. And on Pi Day — March 14, or 3/14 — we love to celebrate the world’s most famous irrational number, pi, whose first 10 digits are 3.141592653.

As the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, pi is not just irrational, meaning it can’t be written as a simple fraction. It is also transcendental, meaning it’s not the root, or solution, to any polynomial equation, such as x+2X^2+3 = 0.

Pi may be one of the best-known numbers, but for people who are paid to think about numbers all day long, the circle constant can be a bit of a bore. We asked several mathematicians to tell us their favorite non-pi numbers. Here are some of their answers.Tau

People often eat pie on pi day. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

You know what’s cooler than one pie? … Two pies. In other words, two times pi, or the number “tau,” which is roughly 6.28.

“Using tau makes every formula clearer and more logical than using pi,” said John Baez (opens in new tab) , a mathematician at the University of California, Riverside. “Our focus on pi rather than 2pi is a historical accident.”

Tau is what shows up in the most important formulas, he said.

While pi relates a circle’s circumference to its diameter, tau relates a circle’s circumference to its radius — and many mathematicians argue that this relationship is much more important. Tau also makes seemingly unrelated equations nicely symmetrical, such as the one for a circle’s area and an equation describing kinetic and elastic energy.

But tau will not be forgotten on Pi Day! As per tradition, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will send out decisions at 6:28 p.m. today. A few months from now, on June 28, it will be Tau Day.Natural log base

The natural log is expressed as the symbol “e.” (Image credit: Shutterstock)

The base of natural logarithms — written as “e” for its namesake, the 18th-century Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler — may not be as famous as pi, but it also has its own holiday. So, while 3.14 is celebrated on March 14, natural log base — the irrational number beginning with 2.718 — is lionized on Feb. 7.

The base of natural logarithms is most often used in equations (opens in new tab) involving logarithms, exponential growth and complex numbers.

“[It] has the wonderful definition as being the one number for which the exponential function y = e^x has a slope equal to its value at every point,” Keith Devlin (opens in new tab) , emeritus professor and former director of the Stanford University Mathematics Outreach Project in the Graduate School of Education, told Live Science. In other words, if the value of a function is, say, 7.5 at a certain point, then its slope, or derivative, at that point is also 7.5. And, “like pi, it comes up all the time in mathematics, physics and engineering,” Devlin said.Imaginary number i

The imaginary number i. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Take the “p” out of “pi,” and what do you get? That’s right, the number i. No, that’s not really how it works, but i is a pretty cool number. It’s the square root of -1, which means it’s a rule breaker, as you’re not supposed to take the square root of a negative number.

“Yet, if we break that rule, we get to invent the imaginary numbers, and so the complex numbers, which are both beautiful and useful,” Eugenia Cheng (opens in new tab) , a mathematician at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, told Live Science in an email. (Complex numbers can be expressed as the sum of both real and imaginary parts.)

The imaginary number i is an exceptionally weird number because -1 has two square roots: i and -i, Cheng said. “But we can’t tell which one is which!” Mathematicians have to just pick one square root and call it i and the other -i.

“It’s weird and wonderful,” Cheng said.i to the power of i

The number i raised to the power of i is actually a real number roughly equal to 0.207. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Believe it or not, there are ways to make i even weirder. For example, you can raise i to the power of i — in other words, take the square root of -1 raised to the square root of -1 power.

“At a glance, this looks like the most imaginary number possible — an imaginary number raised to an imaginary power,” David Richeson, a professor of mathematics at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania and author of the book “Tales of Impossibility: The 2,000-Year Quest to Solve the Mathematical Problems of Antiquity (opens in new tab) ” (Princeton University Press, 2019), told Live Science. “But, in fact, as Leonhard Euler wrote in a 1746 letter, it is a real number!”

Finding the value of i to the i power involves rearranging Euler’s identity, a formula relating the irrational number e, the imaginary number i, and the sine and cosine of a given angle. When you solve the formula for a 90-degree angle (which can be expressed as pi over 2), you can simplify the equation to show that i to the power of i equals e raised to the power of negative pi over 2.

It sounds confusing (here’s the full calculation (opens in new tab) , if you dare to read it), but the result equals roughly 0.207 — a very real number. At least, in the case of a 90-degree angle.

“As Euler pointed out, i to the i power does not have a single value,” Richeson said, but rather takes on “infinitely many” values depending on the angle you’re solving for. (Because of this, it’s unlikely we’ll ever celebrate an “i to the power of i day.”)Belphegor’s prime number

Belphégor’s prime number, named after a demon, is a palindromic prime with a 666 hiding in the middle. (Image credit: Louis Le Breton/Dictionnaire Infernal)

Belphegor’s prime number is a palindromic prime number with a 666 hiding between 13 zeros and a 1 on each side. The ominous number can be abbreviated as 1 0(13) 666 0(13) 1, where the (13) denotes the number of zeros between the 1 and 666.

Although he didn’t “discover” the number, scientist and author Cliff Pickover (opens in new tab) made the sinister-looking number famous when he named it after Belphegor (or Beelphegor), one of the seven demon princes of hell in the Bible.

The number apparently even has its own devilish symbol, which looks like an upside-down symbol for pi. According to Pickover’s website, the symbol is derived from a glyph in the mysterious Voynich manuscript, an early-15th-century compilation of illustrations and text that no one seems to understand.2^{aleph_0}

There are many types of infinities, and 2^{aleph_0} is a number that describes the size of a particular infinite set.

Harvard mathematician W. Hugh Woodin (opens in new tab) has devoted many years of research to infinite numbers. It’s no surprise, then, that his favorite number is an infinite one: 2^{aleph_0}, or 2 raised to the power of aleph-naught, also called aleph-null. Aleph numbers are used to describe the sizes of infinite sets, where a set is any collection of distinct objects in mathematics. (So, for example, the numbers 2, 4 and 6 can form a set of size 3.)

As for why Woodin chose the number, he said, “Realizing that 2^{aleph_0} is not aleph_0 (i.e., Cantor’s theorem (opens in new tab) ) is the realization that there are different sizes of infinite. So that makes the conception of 2^{aleph_0} rather special.”

In other words, there’s always something bigger: Infinite cardinal numbers are infinite, so there is no such thing as the “largest cardinal number.”Apéry’s constant

Apéry’s constant is an irrational number that begins with 1.2020569 and continues infinitely and shows up in physics equations describing magnetism and the electron. (Image credit: Ian Cuming/Getty Images)

Harvard mathematician Oliver Knill (opens in new tab) told Live Science his favorite number is the Apéry’s constant (zeta(3)), “because there is still some mystery associated with it.” In 1979, French mathematician Roger Apéry proved that a value that would come to be known as Apéry’s constant is an irrational number. (It begins with 1.2020569 and continues infinitely.) The constant is also written as zeta(3), where zeta(3) is the Riemann zeta function when you plug in the number 3.

One of the biggest outstanding problems in math, the Riemann hypothesis, makes a prediction about when the Riemann zeta function equals zero and, if proven, would allow mathematicians to better predict how the prime numbers are distributed.

Riemann’s Zeta function. (Image credit: Furfur)

Of the Riemann hypothesis, renowned 20th-century mathematician David Hilbert once said (opens in new tab) , “If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be, ‘Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?'”

So what’s so cool about this constant? It turns out that Apéry’s constant shows up in fascinating places in physics, including in equations governing the electron’s magnetism and orientation to its angular momentum.The number 1

The number 1 has many interesting properties, such as being the only number that is neither prime nor able to be factored into two numbers. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Ed Letzter (opens in new tab) , a mathematician at Temple University in Philadelphia (and father of former Live Science staff writer Rafi Letzter), had a practical answer:

“I suppose this is a boring answer, but I’d have to choose 1 as my favorite, both as a number and in its different roles in so many different more abstract contexts,” he told Live Science.

One is the only number by which all other numbers divide into integers. It’s the only number divisible by exactly one positive integer (itself, 1). It’s the only positive integer that’s neither prime nor composite.

In both math and engineering, values are often represented as between 0 and 1: “100%” is just a fancy way of saying 1. It’s whole and complete.

And, of course, throughout the sciences, 1 is used to represent basic units. A single proton is said to have a charge of +1. In binary logic, 1 means yes. It’s the atomic number of the lightest element, and it’s the dimension of a straight line.Euler’s identity

Leonhard Euler was a Swiss mathematician, and his identity ties together three fascinating numbers: pi, natural log and i. (Image credit: Jakob Emanuel Handmann/Wikimedia Commons)

Euler’s identity, which is actually an equation, is a real mathematical jewel, at least as described by the late physicist Richard Feynman. It has also been compared to a Shakespearean sonnet.

In a nutshell, Euler’s identity ties together a number of mathematical constants: pi, natural log e and the imaginary unit i.

“[It] connects these three constants with the additive identity 0 and the multiplicative identity of elementary arithmetic: e^{i*Pi} + 1 = 0,” Devlin said.The number 0

Zero may have many useful properties, but it was a surprisingly late concept to emerge. (Image credit: Fernando Trabanco Fotografía/Getty)

If we’re already talking about how awesome 1 is, then why not throw in the even weirder and cooler number 0? For most of written human history, the concept of zero wasn’t all that important. Clay tablets from ancient Babylonian times didn’t always distinguish between numbers like 216 and 2106, according to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland (opens in new tab) .

The ancient Greeks began to develop the idea of using zero as an empty place indicator to distinguish numbers of different magnitudes, but it wasn’t until roughly the seventh century that Indian mathematicians, like Brahmagupta, began describing the modern idea of zero. Brahmagupta wrote that any number multiplied by zero is zero, but he struggled with division, saying that a number, n, divided by zero just comes out as n/0, rather than the modern answer, which is that the result is undefined. (The Maya had also independently derived the concept of zero by A.D. 665.)

Zero is extremely useful, but it is a very tricky concept for many people to wrap their heads around. We have examples such as 1 horse or 3 chickens in our day-to-day lives, but using a number to represent nothing is a larger conceptual leap. “Zero is in the mind but not in the sensory world,” the late Robert Kaplan, a Harvard math professor, told Vox (Kaplan died in 2021). Still, without 0 (and 1), we wouldn’t be able to represent all of the digital binary code that makes our contemporary world run. (Data on computers is represented by strings of 0s and 1s.)The square root of 2

This painting by Raphael depicts philosophers from the school of Athens, including Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, who was credited with discovering the square root of 2. (Image credit: mikroman6/Getty)

Perhaps the most dangerous number ever conceived, the square root of 2 supposedly led to the first mathematical murder in history. The Greek mathematician Hippasus of Metapontum is credited with discovering it in the fifth century B.C., according to the University of Cambridge (opens in new tab) . While working on a separate problem, Hippasus is said to have stumbled on the fact that an isosceles right triangle whose two base sides are 1 unit in length will have a hypotenuse that is √2, which is an irrational number.

According to legend, Hippasus’ contemporaries, members of the quasi-religious order known as the Pythagoreans, threw him into the sea after hearing about his great discovery. That’s because the Pythagoreans believed that “all is number” and the universe only contained whole numbers and their ratios. Irrational numbers like √2 (and pi), which can’t be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers and go on forever after the decimal place, were seen as an abomination.

These days, we’re a little calmer about √2, often calling it Pythagoras’ constant. It starts off as 1.4142135623 … (and, of course, goes on forever). ) Pythagoras’ constant has all sorts of uses. Besides proving the existence of irrational numbers, it is used by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to define the A paper size. The 216 definition (opens in new tab) of the A paper states that the sheet’s length divided by its width should be 1.4142. This means that a piece of A1 paper divided in half by width will yield two A2 pieces of paper. Divide an A2 in half again, and it will produce two A3 pieces of paper, and so on.Slice of pi

NASA uses a truncated estimate of pi that only includes 15 places after the decimal point. That’s all the agency needs to get everywhere they want to go in space. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

Sometimes, the number cooler than pi is…a truncated version of pi. At least, that’s the case for NASA and scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. For interplanetary navigation, JPL uses the number 3.141592653589793, according to JPL’s Chief Engineer for Mission Operations and Science, Marc Rayman (opens in new tab) . At that level of accuracy, Rayman said, NASA can get everything it builds wherever it needs to go.

To see why, it’s helpful to do some number-crunching. The most distant spacecraft from Earth is the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is more than 14.6 billion miles (23.5 billion kilometers) distant from us. At this distance, you can calculate a circumference of a circle that is roughly 94 billion miles (more than 150 billion km) around, yet adding extra decimal places to pi only shaves off a half-inch (1.2 centimeters) of error from the calculation, Rayman said.

Even if scientists wanted to calculate the radius of a circle the size of the known universe to the accuracy of a width of a hydrogen atom, it would only need 37 digits after the decimal point to reach that accuracy, Rayman said.

So what’s cooler than pi? A slice of pi.

Entertainment

‘Powerful individuals’ at BBC making lives of colleagues ‘unbearable’, says chairman

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April 28, 2025

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'Powerful individuals' at BBC making lives of colleagues 'unbearable', says chairman

“Powerful individuals” at the BBC are making the lives of their colleagues “unbearable”, the corporation’s chairman has said, after a review into its workplace culture.

The independent report, sparked by the Huw Edwards scandal, was carried out by Change Associates, the same management consultancy that led a similar review in 2013, following the Jimmy Savile scandal.

BBC chairman Samir Shah told staff ahead of the report’s release on Monday morning: “There is a minority of people whose behaviour is simply not acceptable. And there are still places where powerful individuals – on and off screen – can abuse that power to make life for their colleagues unbearable.”

He said the report made recommendations to “prioritise action over procedural change”, as well as addressing “deep-seated issues” including staff not feeling confident enough to speak up.

Mr Shah added: “In the end, it’s quite simple: if you are a person who is prepared to abuse power or punch down or behave badly, there is no place for you at the BBC.”

While the review, which heard from around 2,500 employees and freelancers from 19 different countries, found no evidence of a toxic culture within the corporation, some staff said there was “a minority of people at the BBC – both on and off-air – who were able to behave unacceptably without it being addressed”.

The report said: “Even though they are small in number, their behaviour creates large ripples which negatively impact the BBC’s culture and external reputation.”

It said these people were “dotted across the organisation in different functions and departments”, and were “often in positions where power could be abused”.

While no specific names were mentioned in the report, it did note “some names were mentioned several times”.

Some considered ‘indispensable’

One example of poor behaviour given included an “untouchable” presenter being “called out for exceptionally inappropriate language”. It said that while “a report was made” and sanctions promised, a senior manager who was in the room at the time of the incident was “perceived as deferring so as not to rock the boat”.

It said a blind eye could be turned to poor behaviours “when productions were award winning or attracting large audiences”.

The report went on to warn that, “at its worst”, the corporation “rewards” such individuals “by providing little or no consequence to their actions”.

It recognised that some of those displaying “unacceptable behaviour” were perceived as “indispensable” to the corporation, and that by moving “potentially vexatious issues” to formal grievance without appropriate due diligence, the BBC was “tolerating” the problem.

It also said that by keeping those who formally raised an issue “in the dark about progress and outcomes,” it was unfairly punishing them.

The BBC board has fully accepted the report and its findings, as has BBC management.

BBC director-general Tim Davie called the report “an important moment for the BBC and the wider industry”.

He said the corporation would implement the recommendations “at pace”, making sure that BBC values are “lived and championed by the whole organisation each and every day.”

Actions being taken include:

• A strengthened code of conduct, with specific guidance for on-air presenters
• A more robust disciplinary policy, with updated examples of misconduct and clear consequences
• All TV production partners must meet Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority (CIISA) industry standards
• A new “Call It Out” campaign to promote positive behaviour, empower informal resolution and challenge poor conduct
• Clear pledges for anyone raising concerns, setting out what they can expect from the BBC

Further actions include succession planning for the most senior on-air roles, a new “resolving concerns helpline”, more training for managers and clearer behaviour expectations for freelancers.

A difficult year for the BBC

The BBC has been under pressure to act after a string of complaints against some of its top talent over the last 12 months.

In September, Edwards, who was the BBC’s lead news presenter, pleaded guilty to three counts of “making” indecent images of children. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence and will be on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

Earlier this month, following a CPS review, Russell Brand, was charged with rape and sexual assault.

Brand, who worked for BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music between 2006 and 2008, denies all allegations against him and says all his sexual encounters were consensual.

The BBC also apologised in January after a review found it “did not take adequate action” upon learning about concerns over former Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood following claims of “bullying and misogynistic behaviour”.

Other allegations of misconduct against BBC talent include accusations of a toxic environment on Strictly Come Dancing and the firing of The One Show presenter Jermaine Jenas after he admitted sending inappropriate messages to female colleagues.

And late last year, Greg Wallace stepped down from his presenting role on MasterChef after multiple historical allegations of misconduct.

Wallace’s lawyers have said it is “entirely false that he engages in behaviour of a sexually harassing nature”. Wallace has since said he is seeking “space to heal”.

Entertainment

Badenoch demands prosecution of rap group Kneecap over ‘dead Tory’ remark

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April 28, 2025

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Badenoch demands prosecution of rap group Kneecap over 'dead Tory' remark

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has demanded the prosecution of rap trio Kneecap after video emerged of the band allegedly advocating for the death of Tory MPs.

Footage of the group at a November 2023 gig appears to show one member saying: “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.”

Downing Street has described the alleged comments as “completely unacceptable”.

Police are investigating – and are also assessing footage reportedly from a gig a year later in London’s Kentish Town Forum.

In the November 2024 video, a member of the band appears to shout “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” – referencing groups which are banned as terrorist organisations in the UK.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “We were made aware of a video on 22 April, believed to be from an event in November 2024, and it has been referred to the counter-terrorism internet referral unit for assessment and to determine whether any further police investigation may be required.

“We have also been made aware of another video believed to be from an event in November 2023.”

Mrs Badenoch said it was “good” the police were looking into the allegations, adding: “Kneecap’s glorification of terrorism and anti-British hatred has no place in our society.

“Now footage shows one of them saying: ‘The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP’.

“After the murder of Sir David Amess, this demands prosecution.”

Conservative MP Sir David was stabbed to death while meeting constituents in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 2021.

Kneecap, made up of Liam Og O Hannaidh, Naoise O Caireallain and JJ O Dochartaigh, have said they are facing a “co-ordinated smear campaign” after speaking out about “the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people”.

Mrs Badenoch and Kneecap are already known to each other.

The Tory leader blocked a government grant to the bilingual Belfast group while she was business secretary.

But last November, Kneecap won a discrimination challenge over the decision to refuse them a £14,250 funding award after the UK government conceded it was “unlawful”.

Downing Street condemned the alleged comments.

“We do not think individuals expressing those views should be receiving government funding,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said.

Asked if the money should be returned, the spokesman added: “That’s up to the group, but clearly the PM rejects the views expressed … does not shy away from condemning them.”

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Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery trial: Everything you need to know

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April 28, 2025

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Kim Kardashian's Paris robbery trial: Everything you need to know

In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.

It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.

Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.

Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?

Here’s everything you need to know.

What happened?

Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.

Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.

Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.

A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.

On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.

At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.

Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”

Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.

She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.

“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal Du Dimanche.

“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”

She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.

Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.

She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.

Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”

According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.

After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.

What was stolen?

As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.

In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:

• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry

Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.

It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.

What will happen in court?

The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.

It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.

The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.

Who is being tried?

There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.

Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:

• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer

Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.

Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.

The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:

• Florus Heroui
• Gary Madar
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer

Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.

With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.

If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.

Will Kardashian give evidence?

Yes, Kardashian will face the robbers in court in May.

Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.

A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.

Why has it taken so long to come to court?

There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.

Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.

French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.

It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.

What has Kardashian said about the incident?

Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.

In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.

She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”

She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.

“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”

Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”

She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.

“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”

In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.

Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”

When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.

“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”

She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.

Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.

She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.