UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Pioneering Physicist Talks at UH About Human, Animal Eyes

We can learn quite a bit from the way animals see, a physicist and chaos theory pioneer told a UH audience in a talk about the differences between the optical systems of humans and animals.  

Mitchell Feigenbaum, head of the mathematical physics laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York, addressed UH faculty and students as part of the Tenneco Distinguished Lecture Series in October.

Feigenbaum discussed how human vision is mirror-like with a strong propensity for astigmatisms. He then focused on what a fish might see contingent upon good acuity and how land animal eyes could easily have been designed to approach those of fish.

One of a small group of scientists who three decades ago were growing more concerned about the inability of science to explain irregular occurrences in everyday life that could be described as chaotic, such as the shape of clouds, Feigenbaum’s pioneering work in chaos theory led to an explosion of interest in the field. The scaling indices he discovered in the transition to chaos are referred to as the “Feigenbaum Numbers.”

His contributions were recognized with numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Wolf Prize in Physics
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