What do sunflowers, Salvador Dali’s painting The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and black holes have in common? They reflect characteristics described by a curious number known since antiquity called the Golden Ratio, or Phi. This irrational number—which approximates to 1.618—has come to represent the proportions of some ideally pleasing geometrical structures. It has the uncanny propensity of popping up where least expected, applicable to phenomena ranging from the leaf arrangements of some plants and the crystals of certain unusual materials to the music of Debussy and the architecture of Le Corbusier.
Astrophysicist Mario Livio leads a fascinating journey as he traces the story of this astonishing number from ancient Egypt and Greece to the present day. Along the way, he introduces historical figures including the followers of Pythagoras and the astronomer Johannes Kepler and such modern-day thinkers and Nobel laureates as mathematical physicist Roger Penrose and chemist Dan Shechtman. Livio carefully separates the myth from the math in a way that brings this remarkable number to life.
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