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http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/t06112002_t611pren.html
Phi
The irrational number Phi - the golden ratio or divine proportion of
antiquity - is 1.6180339887. It is found in the arrangement of rose
petals, mollusc shells, sunflower florets, spirals of pine cones,
hurricanes, fractals, the breeding patterns of rabbits, the structure
of crystals, the behaviour of the stock market, and the shape of the
Milky Way.
It is - wrongly - said to be found in the proportions of the Great
Pyramids, the Pantheon, the Mona Lisa, and in Stradivarius violins. It
is present, though, in Dali's "The Sacrament of the Last Supper".
Phi is crucial to the drawing of the pentagram, a powerful magic
symbol. The ratio enchanted scholars throughout the ages - from
Pythagoras, Kepler, and Penrose to current mathematicians dedicated to
studying the Fibonacci numbers (permutations of phi). Artists like
Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok studied it obsessively.
Its discovery is attributed to Euclid (c. 300 BC) who postulated
that phi is yielded by dividing a line into two segments such that the
ratio of the length of whole line to that of the bigger segment is the
same as the ratio of the length of the bigger segment to that of the
smaller one.
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