Today there are celebrations all over the world Fibonacci daythe day dedicated to one of the most important mathematicians in history: Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacciwhich he introduced in Italy and throughout the West Arabic numerals, and the use of 0. The date for the celebration does not seem to be coincidental: the November 23rd in the Anglo-Saxon world it is11-23, That means the first four numbers of the mathematical sequence theorized by the Italian genius, in which each number is the result of the sum of the previous two. LThe Fibonacci sequence is still used today Barcode development and contributed to population studies and finance.
In recent days two of them have been dedicated to Fibonacci Educational activities as part of the Rome Science Festival, scheduled until November 27th: “How did we get the numbers?” and “Accipicchia Fibonacci”. And on the occasion of Fibonacci day starts to City of Science Naplesthe “Futuro Remoto” festival with an exhibition on the topic Pisan mathematician And Educational workshops on playing with numbers, starting with the famous number sequence.
Leonardo Pisano was born at 1170 and he knew it Arabic mathematics thanks to his work in the Pisan trading colony of Bugia in Algeria. At his “Liber Abbaci”written on his return from his travels, it must have been the spread of Arabic numerals in the Western world and zero which replaced the use of the Roman ones, which had been widespread until then.
It’s that too golden number. Marked with the Greek letter φ (phi), the golden ratio, like π, is a number whose decimal expansion continues indefinitely and never repeats itself without a general pattern. The decimal expansion of π starts at 3.14159 that of φ with 1.61803. The connection between Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio was proven in the 19th century: When each Fibonacci number is divided by the previous one, the result obtained as it traverses the sequence tends to φ (1,618) that is, it is increasingly approaching the golden ratio, a reality that is present in many cases natural realities. The example of is famous Nautilus mollusc shell which perfectly reflects its shape:
Nautilus mollusc shell
There Art history is full of expressions of the Golden Ratio: from the facade of Parthenon in Athens to many works by Leonardo da Vinci, as made known to the public also thanks thanks to the book of Dan Brown “The Da Vinci Code” which connects the study of the mathematician with some of the works of the Tuscan genius.
The influences of the golden ratio have even reached the present day Music by Bach, Debussy, Stockhausen, Xenakis.