Everything we perceive comes in delightful multicoloured forms. Now, in the age of science, we want to comprehend what and why we see. Two dozen biologists, chemists, physicists, psychologists, computer scientists and mathematicians met at the Institut d'Hautes Etudes Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. They expounded their views on the physical, biological and physiological mechanisms creating the tapestry of patterns we see in molecules, plants, insects, seashells and even the human brain. This volume comprises surveys of different aspects of pattern formation and recognition, and is...

The beauty of plants has attracted the attention of mathematicians for Mathematics centuries. Conspicuous geometric features such as the bilateral sym and beauty metry of leaves, the rotational symmetry of flowers, and the helical arrangements of scales in pine cones have been studied most exten sively. This focus is reflected in a quotation from Weyl 159, page 3], "Beauty is bound up with symmetry. " This book explores two other factors that organize plant structures and therefore contribute to their beauty. The first is the elegance and relative simplicity of developmental algorithms, that...