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The Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi (INFN, La Sapienza University of Rome, vice president of the Accademia dei Lincei) receives the Nobel Prize in Physics for his studies on Complex Systems. He splits the Nobel Prize in Physics in half with Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann.

H1N1 Swine Flu Epidemic

American ecologist James Cushing discovers chaotic dynamics in populations of Tribolium castaneum. In the following years, such chaotic dynamics will be revealed in many cases of populations of animals, plants, bacteria.

Chinese mathematician Quidong Wang, who teaches at the University of Arizona Department of Mathematics, extends to any number of bodies the partial solution to the Three-Body Problem found in 1912 by Finnish mathematician Karl Frithiof Sundman. Sundman found that the presence of chaos, particularly in

The key to Chaos is the resonances that act as amplifiers of small differences

Jacques Laskar of the Bureau des Longitude in Paris shows that the Earth’s orbit is chaotic over a period of 200 million years, meaning it is impossible to calculate where it will be in 200 million years.

Sussman and Wisdom with Digital Orrery demonstrate the chaos of the Solar System, starting from the orbit of Pluto simulated over 845 million years. Deterministic stable chaos or: unpredictability of position and velocity but probable (not certain) stability.

With the Digital Orrery the substantial (i.e. probable) stability of the solar system is demonstrated: stable deterministic chaos or: unpredictability of position and velocity but probable (not certain) stability.

Edward Belbruno, born in Heidelberg, and who works in Pasadena at JPL, understands that the chaotic dynamics of problems with more than two bodies can be an opportunity for interplanetary travel. He calls the technique Fuzzy Boundary Theory, and in 1990 he will test his

Benoit Mandelbrot creates the famous Mandelbrot Set: practically a catalogue of Julia Sets: the black points of the Mandelbrot Sets give rise to non-connected Julia Sets (if the series 0, c, c2+c, (c2+c)2+c, … diverges)

Michel Henon discovers the Henon strange attractor: x=y+1-1.4*x^2; y=0.3*x

Werner Karl Heisenberg dies in Munich; on his deathbed he declared: “When I stand before God I will ask him two things: why Relativity and why Turbulence; I think He has an answer to the first question…”

Australian ecologist Robert May writes a short article for Nature highlighting and demonstrating that the equations commonly used to model (correctly) changes in animal and plant populations in nature can, and quite often, have chaotic behaviors. The main tool used by May is the logistic

Benoit Mandelbrot: Geometric Theory of Fractals

Martin Gardner explains in a famous article on Scientific American, the game LIFE by John Conway, or the most famous example of Cellular Automata; there are only 2 rules: if a cell is alive and has 2 or 3 living cells nearby, then it survives

Edward Lorenz shows that the dynamics of chaos is extremely sensitive to initial conditions.

Edward Lorenz demonstrates the limits of predictability in meteorology (part of Chaos theory)

Edward Lorenz Discovers Strange Attractors

The 3-body problem is attacked by Vladimir Arnol’d and Jurgen Moser, with the so-called KAM theorem, from their initials and that of Andrej Kolmogorov who in 1954 had indicated the guidelines for dealing with it. Henri Poincare’ had already tackled the problem at the end

The 3-body problem is attacked head-on by Andrej Kolmogorov who indicates the guidelines to deal with it. His program will be completed by Vladimir Arnol’d and Jurgen Moser in 1962 in the so-called KAM theorem. Henri Poincaré had already tackled the problem at the end

The Englishman B. Thomas discovers that the friction of water in pipes can be significantly reduced by using small (1%) quantities of polymers dissolved in water; the long chains of polymers, in fact, discourage the formation of vortices and turbulences that would slow down the

Birkhoff develops Chaos Theory

The French Gaston Julia and Pierre Fatou discover the fractal figures later called Julia Sets: the colored points (inside the prisoner set) if subjected to the z2+c transformation remain confined in the prisoner set, the points outside it diverge to infinity.

Finnish mathematician Karl Frithiof Sundman discovers that the presence of chaos does not rule out series solutions, but these are almost always valid, rather than valid. He applies the concept to the Three-Body Problem. His series converge unless the initial state has zero momentum, but

Fractals: Georg Cantor creates Cantor’s Dust (a line is divided into three parts, two black and one transparent, ad infinitum); Sierpinsky Carpet (a square is divided into 9 squares and the central one is removed, ad infinitum); Menger’s Sponge (it is the Sierpinsky Carpet applied

The Swede Helge Van Koch creates the Koch Flake: a triangle on whose sides another triangle ad infinitum is obtained, a fractal figure with dimension 1.2618

Henri Poincare’ publishes the trilogy “The New Methods of Celestial Mechanics” which deals in particular with the topological study of nonlinear differential equations and the apparently chaotic behavior of their solutions depending on small changes in the initial conditions.

Henri Poincare’ revises his thesis on Acta Mathematica: the solar system is stable and inaugurates the notion of Dynamic Chaos