Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

Description

The story of a dazzling kind of order in the universe, the harmony that comes from cycles in sync. The tendency to synchronize is one of the most far-reaching drives in all of nature. It extends from people to planets, from animals to atoms. In "Sync" Professor Steven Strogatz considers a range of applications - human sleep and circadian rhythms, menstrual synchrony, insect outbreaks, superconductors, lasers, secret codes, heart arrhythmias and fads - connecting all through an exploration of the same mathematical theme: self-organization, or the spontaneous emergence of order out of chaos. Focused enough to present a coherent world unto themselves, Strogatz's chosen topics touch on several of the hottest directions in contemporary science.

Steven Strogatz is Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University and one of the world's leading researchers into chaos, complexity and synchronization. His seminal reasearch has been featured in Nature, Science, Scientific American, The New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Daily Telegraph.