Pau Atela-Cortés is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Smith College, Northampton, MA. He earned his Ph.D. at Boston University in the area of complex dynamics.

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At the symposium, he will take us on a botanical tour from sphere packing to fractals, which he vigorously explores together with his students:
"A Dynamical System in Phyllotaxis"

Abstract

Pine cones, sunflowers, artichokes, daisies... A great number of plants exhibit spirals that appear in two sets according to their orientation, clockwise and counterclockwise. The study of these arrangements is called Phyllotaxis. Most often, when counting the spirals in each set, we get a pair of consecutive Fibonacci numbers. (These are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21,... each the sum of the previous two.) We will talk about a simple mathematical model of meristem growth based on Dynamical Systems theory, which might give us insights into this remarkable phenomenon observed for centuries.

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