The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells

  • Hans Meinhardt
Springer, DM89, $54.95, £34

As Philip Ball explains in Made to Measure, reviewed left, mollusc shells not only are sophisticated composite materials but can be ornately decorated with coloured pigments produced by cells in the proten outer mantle. The patterns are frozen ‘chemical waves’ generated by complex, nonlinear interactions between cells during shell growth, which modulate the production of pigment. The images here are taken from the enlarged version of Hans Meinhardt's The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells (Springer, DM89, $54.95, £34), the first edition of which was reviewed in Nature 375, 745 (1995).