Fibonacci is the name whereby the mathematician Leonardo of Pizza (1170-1250) is commonly known today. In his youth Leonardo was called Filus Bonacci ("son of (Guilielmo) Bonacci"), the name stuck although over the years it has evolved to Fibonacci. He travelled widely, met with scholars through out the Medi terranean area, and produced four very significant works of arithmetic and geometry. One of his discoveries is the sequence of numbers that bears his name:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ..
After the first two values , 0 and 1, each number of the Fibonacci sequence is obtained from the sum of the preceding two numbers. The Fibonacci sequence describes such natural phenomena as the spiralling pattern on Nautilus shells, elephant tusks, sheep horns, birds claws, pine apples and the branching patterns of plants.
Created and maintained by Frans Coenen. Last updated 11 October 1999