The Fibonacci Sequence

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 November 2007

⏱️ 43 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Fibonacci Sequence. Named after a 13th century Italian Mathematician, Leonardo of Pisa who was known as Fibonacci, each number in the sequence is created by adding the previous two together. It starts 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 and goes on forever. It may sound like a piece of mathematical arcania but in the 19th century it began to crop up time and again among the structures of the natural world, from the spirals on a pinecone to the petals on a sunflower.The Fibonacci sequence is also the mathematical first cousin of the Golden Ratio – a number that has haunted human culture for thousands of years. For some, the Golden ratio is the essence of beauty found in the proportions of the Parthenon and the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci. With Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford; Jackie Stedall, Junior Research Fellow in History of Mathematics at Queen’s College, Oxford; Ron Knott, Visiting Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Surrey

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:47.2	Hello.
0:49.2	0.1. 1.
0:50.7	2. 3. 5. 8, 13, 21, 34, I could go on ad infinitum.
0:57.8	This is the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence, a string of numbers,
1:01.2	named after, but probably not invented by the 13th century Italian mathematician
1:05.1	Fibonacci. It may seem like a piece of mathematical arcania, but the Fibonacci sequence is
1:10.8	found to appear time and time again among the structures of the natural world and even in the products of human culture.
1:16.4	From a pathanant to pine cones from the petals on the sunflower to the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci,
1:21.4	the Fibonacci sequence appears to be written into the world
1:24.0	around us. But what does it signify? With me to discuss the Fibonacci sequence, a Jackie Stuttle,
1:29.3	Junior Research Fellow in the History of Mathematics at the Queen's College, Oxford, Ron Not Visiting Fellow in the History of Mathematics at the Queens College, Oxford,
1:33.0	Ron not visiting fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Surrey,
1:37.0	and Marcus Gisotoy, Professor of Mathematics at Waddam College, Oxford.
	...

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