complexitystudies

Here in quick succession another fractal link: I am especially fascinated by this, because ever since seeing the picture by Escher I have wondered why he didn’t fill in the middle and that there must be a way to do this. This site has all the details.

In 1956, Maurits Cornelis Escher completed a drawing called “Print Gallery”. The drawing depicts a young man looking at a print in a gallery that is deformed almost beyond recognition. There is an enigmatic white area in the center of the image.

In 2003, a group of mathematicians at Leiden University, led by Prof. Hendrik Lenstra succeeded in unraveling the mathematical structure of the image. Once this structure was known, they could “complete” the image by filling in the famous white spot with the help of a computer algorithm.

A summary of their method was published in a paper, and received a lot of acclaim, not only in academic circles, but also in the general press.

Technorati Tags: fractals, mathematics

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