Mario Livio

Offers a look at phi, or "the golden ratio," discovered by Euclid more than two thousand years ago, examining the meaning of this remarkable mathematical proportion in terms of science, biology, philosophy, and other fields.

The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number

The Golden Ratio

What do the Parthenon in Greece, crosses in graveyards, the ratio of the height of a woman's navel to a woman's height, sunflowers and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa have in common? The answer is that these disparate elements share a geometrical proportion of ancient origin commonly known as the golden ratio, or expressed numerically as phi. fractals and DNA on the way, the author takes us into the heart of this extraordinary number. He gives an account of the phi-obsessed individuals who devoted their lives to discovering its secrets - from the Pythagoreans who believed that the study of the Golden Ratio would reveal the hand of God, to the astronomer Johannes Kepler who felt that phi was the greatest treasure of geometry, to the modern day scientists who are discovering ever more remarkable ramifications of this strange, almost mystical, number.

The Golden Ratio The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number

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