Description
Biography of the boy who was once teased for being a blockhead and how he discovered what came to be known as the Fibonacci Sequence.
As a young boy in medieval Italy, Leonardo Fibonacci thought about numbers day and night. He was such a daydreamer that people called him a blockhead.
When Leonardo grew up and traveled the world, he was inspired by the numbers used in different countries. Then he realized that many things in nature, from the number of petals on a flower to the spiral of a nautilus shell, seem to follow a certain pattern.
From the book:
Little is known about the life of the mathematician called Leonardo Fibonacci. This story is based on the few things we do know—and a bit of make-believe. His nickname, Bigollo, can be translated as “wanderer” “traveler.” It may also mean “idler, dreamer, or lazy person.” In other words, a blockhead.
Today, Leonardo is considered the greatest Western mathematician of the Middle Ages. A statue of him stands in Pisa, Italy, not far from the famous Leaning Tower. And the Hindu-Arabic numerals that he worked so hard to introduce to the world are the very same ones we use today
For all his work, Leonardo is best known for the number pattern that appeared in his famous rabbit problem, a
pattern we call the Fibonacci Sequence. (Fibonacci means “son of Bonaccio.”] Scientists and mathematicians now
know that the sequence is special: It’s a blueprint that describes how living things such as flowers grow in an orderly, harmonious way. The numbers even pop up in works of human imagination – buildings, art, music and poetry.
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