Orgasm 2012

 This is wonderful (and perhaps too short of a) film by Cristóbal Vila, illustrating the fascinating beauty of numbers in nature.

What do financial markets, branching trees, computer algorithms, and uncurling ferns have in common?  Leonardo Pisano Bigollo (1170-1250), also known as Leonardo Fibonacci (source: Wikipedia). 

Leonardo was the son of a wealthy Italian merchant and traveled with his father from an early age.  He was also a great lover of mathematics and on one of their voyages, Leonardo discovered the Hindu-Arabic numeral system.  He quickly realized the greater effectiveness of these numerals when compared to the Roman ones, and became fascinated with this discovery - travelling all around the Mediterranean in order to learn more from the leading Arab mathematicians of the time.

In the year 1202, he published the Liber Abaci (or Book of Calculation), which spread the Hindu-Arabic numeral system throughout Europe.   In this mathematical manifesto, Leonardo Fibonacci also presented a series of numbers which he borrowed from Indian mathematics, a special pattern  of numbers that  became known as the Fibonacci numbers, and would fascinate the western world even today.

(For a video with a more detailed description of Fibonacci numbers, click here.)