18-April-2008, 08:15 AM
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
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Edward N. Lorenz discoverer of Chaos Theory has died
From the LA Times
Quote:
Edward N. Lorenz, the MIT meteorologist whose efforts to use computers to increase the precision of weather forecasts inadvertently led to the discovery of chaos theory and demonstrated that precise long-range forecasts are impossible, died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 90.
Lorenz was perhaps best known for the title of a 1972 paper, "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?" The memorable title pithily summarized the essence of chaos theory -- that very small changes in a system can have very large and unexpected consequences.
Although the chaos theory was initially applied to weather forecasting, it subsequently found its way into a wide variety of scientific and nonscientific applications, including the geometry of snowflakes and the predictability of which movies will become blockbusters.
His work "profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton," wrote the committee that awarded him the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences in the field of earth and planetary sciences.
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