On Growth and Form

Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 146358735X ISBN 13: 9781463587352

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011

Sir D'Arcy W. Thompson CB FRS FRSE (1860-1948) was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of ON GROWTH AND FORM, an influential work of striking originality and elegance.

The central theme of ON GROWTH AND FORM is that biologists of its author's day overemphasized evolution as the fundamental determinant of the form and structure of living organisms, and under-emphasized the roles of physical laws and mechanics.

Peter Medawar who was the 1960 Nobel Laureate in Medicine called ON GROWTH AND FORM "the finest work of literature in all the annals of science that have been recorded in the English tongue."

Book Description:

D'Arcy Thompson's classic On Growth and Form looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also become renowned for the sheer poetry of its descriptions. It is now available for a wider readership including a foreword by one of today's great populisers of science.