Extending Turing's theory to help understand how biological patterns are created. (Image: Xavier Diego, EMBL) Alan Turing sought to explain how patterns in nature arise with his 1952 theory on ...

Turing also turned his math skills to understanding how regular features could emerge on the developing embryo. Scientists since then have applied his equations to the development of such patterns as ...

The strikingly patterned ornate boxfish has no lack of detail when it comes to its hexagonal spots and keen stripes — the intricate markings are so sharp-edged in the species that it had engineers at ...

Learn how different animals get their stripes. Would you believe the answer is… math? This is the story of a WWII wartime codebreaker and his quest to decode nature’s most beautiful patterns. Alan ...

A mixture of two types of pigment-producing cells undergoes diffusiophoretic transport to self-assemble into a hexagonal pattern. Credit: Siamak Mirfendereski and Ankur Gupta/CU Boulder A zebra’s ...

Desert plants naturally group in patterns that Alan Turing predicted in 1952. Polymath dynamo Turing is most famous for the Turing machine. Plants in Turing patterns are able to retain water and ...