Monday 30 September 2013

Lewis Fry Richardson

This is the sixtieth anniversary of the death of the mathematician and scientist whose Quaker pacifism prevented him from gaining posts which would have given him more prestige and recognition. He contributed to the science of meteorology, and wrote papers which foreshadowed chaos theory and fractals. I am particularly intrigued though by the citations in this biography of his work applying mathematics to the causes of war. One wonders what his formulae would produce in the current world situation.

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