Symmetry abounds in nature, often in its most beautiful forms. A perfect snowflake, a blooming sunflower, a light-harvesting complex from a bacterium—they all exhibit striking symmetry, crafted by ...

Tessellations aren’t just eye-catching patterns—they can be used to crack complex mathematical problems. By repeatedly reflecting shapes to tile a surface, researchers uncovered a method that links ...

A leopard is chasing a zebra, bound to follow the laws of nature and natural selection, down a sand dune and across a plain of dried mud, bound to the laws of geology and sediments. The stripes of the ...

A new study helps bring the incredible color and pattern variation in butterflies into focus. The results align with a growing body of evidence that suggests butterfly-wing diversity really boils down ...

To most people, “symmetry” means the bilateral symmetry exhibited by, say, a butterfly, or the human face. That is, if you take a picture of a butterfly and draw a straight line down the middle of the ...

This lavishly illustrated book provides a hands-on, step-by-step introduction to the intriguing mathematics of symmetry. Instead of breaking up patterns into blocks--a sort of potato-stamp ...

Richard Cook receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, there are many faces that a majority would find ...