Today, Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory and the man who popularized the "butterfly effect", died in Cambridge, MA at the age of 90. Click here to access his obituary.Not surprisingly, literature and film have embraced the underlying ideas of chaos theory. My favorite post-modern play, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, focuses on the mathematics behind fractals during the 1800s and contemporary times. Chaos theory also plays a large role in the movie "Pi".
While searching the wikipedia page for chaos theory, it also mentions that chaos theory is mentioned in the films "The Butterfly Effect," "Chaos", and "The Science of Sleep." I haven't seen the other two, but I don't remember any mention of chaos theory in "The Science of Sleep" - does anyone else remember it?
Here's a cool webpage on fractals. The image above is also generated by fractals.
