About This Page
Welcome to Dawson Merrill's
Fibonacci and Golden Ratio Link web page. Please note that unless otherwise stated
each link takes you off my page to an Internet site, the author of which deserves all the credit for
his or her efforts. It is my hope that I am maintaining a single point of focus for all
mathematicians, scientists, researchers, hobbyists, and explorers everywhere in providing a well organized link to the
appropriate Internet resource.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Professor Gerald Alexanderson of
Santa Clara University who first planted the seed
and watered the thirst for my personal pursuit of the Golden Ratio. It began in a phone conversation when I was a teenager in 1980. Although not comprehending much of what Professor Alexanderson said while on the phone, I feverishly
scribbled down as much and as fast as I could. Then after the call, putting pencil, compass, and straightedge to
paper, I began to catch a glimpse of the beauties of which he spoke. Ever since, it
has been my life's most inspiring and enthralling quest. I'd also like to thank
Dr. Ron Knott of
Surrey University for his kindness in linking my web page from his, an honor and trust that has resulted in the
vast majority of Web sojourners seeking Golden enlightenment to stumble across my efforts in collecting this
resource. Thank you as well to Dr. Simon Plouffe of the
Laboratoire de Combinatoire et d'Informatique Mathématique at Université du Québec à Montréal who posted my
record, since removed, in computing the square root of 5 to 10,000,000 decimal places on his
Table of Current Records for the Computation of Constants
web page on December 20, 1999.
Briefly regarding my own accomplishments in striving to break new ground in the world of the Golden Ratio,
it was in my second year away at college in 1987 that I calculated Phi to 100,000 places - the record I
believe, at the time. I let the program run all night in the computer lab by leaving my binder as a
weight on the space bar so my session wouldn't "time out" due to inactivity. As luck would have it,
neither staff nor student disturbed the lonely notebook, and I still retain the resultant greenbar printout
to this day, crisp and yellowed with age.
If asked to sum up the Golden Ratio in a word, I would reply, "Growth". When we observe the structure of
leaves around a stem, the pattern of seeds in a sunflower, the sequence of chambers in a nautilus shell, we are
struck by the uniform nature common to them all. But it is that growth itself that causes the uniformity,
and so we further observe the pattern as it emerges in the human frame, the proportions artisans find pleasing
to the aesthetic sensibilities of eye and ear, and extending perhaps even to the planetary distribution of our solar
system, grasping for clues to the significance of the Golden Ratio. The reason the division of a line
into mean and extreme ratio is exhilarating is because it denotes
the line's relationship to itself, exhibiting the possibilities for both introspection and explosion. It
bodily demonstrates movement, a key to great art in every sensory medium, and adeptly illustrates motion
over time. The Golden Ratio is the antithesis of stagnation - it is growth, it is
life. The attraction humankind has for this fascinating number, from artist to engineer, theorist
to theologian, is that it is the unit of measure which shows not only how our physical systems grow, but it
is a view of the knot that ties the universe together, and with it our perception of that universe. Whether
this leads one to ponder the intelligence behind creation, or to see the unity sewn through the very fabric of
existence, the Golden Ratio truly is, as Luca Pacioli penned in 1498, "Divina Proportione".
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