D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

D' Arcy Wentworth Thompson ( born 2 May 1860 in Edinburgh, † June 21 1948 in St Andrews ) was a British mathematician and biologist.

Life and work

D' Arcy Wentworth Thompson was born the son of a Greek professor. His mother died at birth and he grew up partly with his father, partly at his maternal uncle Joseph Gamgee, who was a biochemist and interested him early for science. From 1877 he studied medicine at Edinburgh, but moved three years later in Cambridge zoology. In 1884 he became professor of zoology or natural history in Dundee, where he established a zoological collection on. As a member of a commission to investigate the seals catch he made ​​frequent trips to the Arctic and visited 1896/1897 the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. He was in the Scottish Fisheries Commission and the UK in the International Commission for the Study of the oceans from 1902. In Dundee he was very sociable and was responsible for the renovation of houses in slum neighborhoods. From 1917 he was professor of natural history at St Andrews. From 1916 he was a Fellow of the Royal Society (London ), the Vice President, he was from 1931 to 1933. In 1946 he received their Darwin Medal. 1934 to 1939 he was president of the Edinburgh Royal Society. In 1937 he was knighted.

Thompson is often called the "first Biomathematician ". His fame is based on the book "On Growth and Form ", whose first edition appeared in 1917 ( German "On Growth and Form" ).

The central thesis of "On Growth and Form " is that Thompson's contemporaries overestimated the importance of the evolution of the shape and structure of living things and thereby overlooked the influence of mathematics, physics and mechanics. The book cites numerous examples of the similarity of biological and mechanical structures in mind. Thompson's observations on the leaf position in plants and their correlation to the Fibonacci sequence has become a textbook classic. Often also cites the studies on the form of related organisms that put Thompson on mathematical transformations to each other.

"On Growth and Form " is in the descriptive tradition; Thomson himself has said about the book: " My book really needs no introduction, because it is actually from the beginning to the end of a single Foreword". Although the book is essentially a collection of observations and does not attempt to find causal explanations, it was the inspiration for one of the most influential classics of biology literature, the generations of biologists, architects, artists and mathematicians.

His classical education was found, for example, in his translation of Aristotle's "Historia animalium " and in his Greek dictionaries for fish and bird names.

Thompson married in 1901 and had three daughters.

Awards

In 1916 he was elected as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society, in 1946, the Darwin Medal awarded him.

Quote

• "For the harmony of the world is made ​​manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. " (On Growth and Form, 1917. )

Writings

• On Growth and Form. 1917, ISBN 0486671356 German. Overgrowth and shape. In abbreviated form new ed. by John Tyler Bonner. Translated by Ella M. Fountain and Magdalena Neff. With a foreword by Adolf Portmann. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-28010-4.