D'Arcy Thompson
How 100 years ago D'Arcy Thompson showed us that nature's shapes - of flowers, shells and honeycombs - are dictated by maths.
One hundred years ago D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson published On Growth and Form, a book with a mission to put maths into biology. He showed how the shapes, forms and growth processes we see in the living world aren’t some arbitrary result of evolution’s blind searching, but are dictated by mathematical rules. A flower, a honeycomb, a dragonfly’s wing: it’s not sheer chance that these look the way they do. But can these processes be explained by physics? D'Arcy Thompson loved nature’s shapes and influenced a whole new field of systems biology, architects, designers and artists, including Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.
Presented by Phillip Ball.
Picture: Corn shell, Getty Images
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- Mon 2 Apr 2018 19:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet
- Tue 3 Apr 2018 04:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Australasia, East and Southern Africa, News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Tue 3 Apr 2018 06:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia & East and Southern Africa only
- Tue 3 Apr 2018 10:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service West and Central Africa
- Tue 3 Apr 2018 14:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia
- Sun 8 Apr 2018 01:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Mon 9 Apr 2018 00:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service West and Central Africa
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