Alan Turing, on Morphology

[MichaelG.]

I am delighted to see ‘Morphology and Behavior’ has been included in the Board Index

So I am taking this opportunity to re-post a recent reference to Alan Turing’s work on Morphogenesis:

Alan Turing [yes, the genius code-breaker] did some work in the early 1950s :
Ref. 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis' [. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 237, 37-72 (1952)]

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/h ... oupland-1/


The mathematical content is near-incomprehensible to this mere mortal … but the underlying concepts are interesting and significant.

Turing also worked on a computer model of a chemical reaction-diffusion process which might explain the emergence of patterns in biological organisms. His research student Bernard Richards applied reaction-diffusion equations to spherical forms. As Turing expected, they produced the symmetrical 'spines' seen in microscopic sea animals called radiolaria.

https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/pu ... on-the-mat

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MichaelG.

PostScript: As the Earth’s climate continues to change, I suspect we [or our descendants] will see morphological changes occurring, in accordance with Turing’s explanation of the process.

[linuxusr]

I had trouble figuring out the "fingerprints" in the second link. You can download Turing's paper here:

https://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/ ... ring.pdf

A.M. Turing, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis"

This is from Caltech in California!

[MichaelG.]

I had trouble figuring out the "fingerprints" in the second link.

.

I don’t think I have seen ‘fingerprints’ in action before …
but it looks like the Librarian was trained on Edge-Notched Cards [*] as a data-retrieval engine

Ref. https://kk.org/thetechnium/one-dead-media/

It’s probably fine once you get used-to it.

MichaelG.

.
[*] … Yes, I have actually used them !