![]() ![]() We meet a wide collection of people who have influenced thinking in these areas - zoologist D’Arcy Thompson, biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, mathematician Alan Turing, chemist Raphael Eduard Liesegang, and biochemists Boris Pavlovitch Belousov and Anatoly Zhabotinsky.īall brings more chemistry to bear on these subjects than previous authors on these topics, exploring possible links between biomolecular structure and biological form, but he continually relates the chemistry to other sciences. Starting from D’Arcy Thompson’s On growth of form (1917, reprinted 1992), through Peter Stevens’ Patterns in Nature (1974) to Ball’s own previous book The Self-made tapestry, with a few related offerings by Ian Stewart and others.īall, whose writings are familiar to Chemistry World readers through his regular Crucible page, tackles his subject with enthusiasm and insight: exploring form and pattern in nature, including cellular and bubble patterns and packings chemical waves, oscillations and spirals spots, stripes and other body patterns patterning in populations and ecosystems plant phyllotaxis and embryonic morphogenesis and patterning genes. ![]() As such, it joins a long line of books which I have read and enjoyed in this area. Shapes is the firstof a series of three books (the other two volumes, Flow and Branches, will be published later this year) which explore the relationships between nature, mathematics, physics and chemistry. ![]()
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