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THE
GOLDEN
RATIO
The Story of Phi,
the World's Most Astonishing Number
MARIO LIVIO
BROADWAY BOOKS
New York
PREFACE
The Golden Ratio
is a book about one number—a very special number.
You will encounter this number, 1.61803
, in lectures on art history,
and it appears in lists of "favorite numbers" compiled by mathemati-
cians. Equally striking is the fact that this number has been the subject
of numerous experiments in psychology.
I became interested in the number known as the Golden Ratio fif-
teen years ago, as I was preparing a lecture on aesthetics in physics (yes,
this is not an oxymoron), and I haven't been able to get it out of my
head since then.
Many more colleagues, friends, and students than I would be able
to mention, from a multitude of disciplines, have contributed directly
and indirectly to this book. Here I would like to extend special thanks
to Ives-Alain Bois, Mitch Feigenbaum, Hillel Gauchman, Ted Hill,
Ron Lifschitz, Roger Penrose, Johanna Postma, Paul Steinhardt, Pat
Thiel, Anne van der Helm, Divakar Viswanath, and Stephen Wolfram
for invaluable information and extremely helpful discussions.I am grateful to my colleagues Daniela Calzetti, Stefano Casertano,
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