The Seduction of Curves

Download or read book The Seduction of Curves written by Allan McRobie and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this large-format book, lavishly illustrated in color throughout, Allan McRobie takes the reader on an alluring exploration of the beautiful curves that shape our world--from our bodies to Salvador Dalí's paintings and the space-time fabric of the universe itself. The book focuses on seven curves--the fold, cusp, swallowtail, and butterfly, plus the hyperbolic, elliptical, and parabolic "umbilics"--and describes the surprising origins of their taxonomy in the catastrophe theory of mathematician René Thom.