Today Fibonacci Day
is celebrated all over the world
, the day dedicated to
one of the most important mathematicians in history:
Leonardo Pisano, known as Fibonacci , who introduced
Arabic numerals
and the use of
0
in Italy and throughout the West
.
The date for the celebration does not seem random:
November 23
in the Anglo-Saxon world is
11-23,
or
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
.
The Fibonacci sequence is still applied in the
development of barcodes
and contributed to population studies and finance.
In these days, two
educational activities are dedicated to Fibonacci as part of the Rome Science Festival
, scheduled until November 27: "How did the numbers get there?"
and “Wow Fibonacci”.
And on the occasion of
Fibonacci Day
, the "Futuro Remoto" festival
kicks off at the
Città della Scienza in Naples with an exhibition dedicated to the
Pisan mathematician
and
educational workshops to play with numbers starting from the famous sequence.
Leonardo Pisano
was born around
1170
and became acquainted
with Arabic mathematics
thanks to his work at the Pisan merchant colony of Bugia in Algeria.
His "
Liber Abbaci"
, written on his return from his travels, is responsible
for the diffusion of the Arabic numerals in the western world and of the zero
which supplanted the use of the Roman ones, widespread up to that moment.
His is also the
golden number.
Denoted by the Greek letter
φ
(phi), the golden section is, like π, a number whose decimal expansion continues indefinitely, never repeating itself without a general pattern.
The decimal expansion of π begins with 3.14159
that of φ with 1.61803
.
The connection between the Fibonacci numbers and the golden section was verified in the 19th century:
if each Fibonacci number is divided by the previous one, as one proceeds in the sequence the result obtained tends to φ (
1.618)
i.e. it progressively approaches the section gold, reality present in many
natural realities
.
The example of the
shell of the Nautilus mollusc is famous
which takes its shape perfectly:
Wikipedia/Gedoghedo
Shell of the Nautilus mollusk
The
history of art
is full of expressions of the golden section: from the facade of the
Parthenon in Athens
to many works by
Leonardo da Vinci,
as made known to the general public
also thanks to the thanks to
Dan Brown's book "The Da Vinci Code",
which relates the study of the mathematician to some works of the Tuscan genius.
The influences of the golden section even reached the
music of Bach, Debussy, Stockhausen, Xenakis.