Humans are attracted to symmetry: in our buildings, our gardens, in our potential partners. For plants, the symmetrical shapes of organs are a matter of survival because the form directly impacts the ...

To most people, “symmetry” means the bilateral symmetry exhibited by, say, a butterfly, or the human face. That is, if you take a picture of a butterfly and draw a straight line down the middle of the ...

To begin to understand what mathematicians and physicists see in the abstract structures of symmetries, let’s start with a familiar shape. We are fond of saying things are symmetric, but what does ...