Edward Norton Lorenz
Edward Norton Lorenz (23 May 1917 – 16 April 2008) was an American mathematician, meteorologist, and a pioneer of chaos theory.
He introduced the idea of strange attractors, and coined the term butterfly effect.
Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow
Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow is the title of Lorenz's most important paper.
During the 1950s, Lorenz became skeptical of the appropriateness of the linear statistical models in meteorology, as most atmospheric phenomena involved in weather forecasting are non-linear.
His work on the topic culminated in the publication of his 1963 paper Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
In subsequent years, many other mathematicians -- those building the new field of chaos theory -- read and were influenced by the paper. The paper was, and remains, widely seen as foundational to chaos theory.
Towards the end of his life, Lorenz enjoyed widespread recognition and admiration for his work.
From the paper:
Two states differing by imperceptible amounts may eventually evolve into two considerably different states ... If, then, there is any error whatever in observing the present state — and in any real system such errors seem inevitable — an acceptable prediction of an instantaneous state in the distant future may well be impossible .... In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be nonexistent.
See also
- Butterfly effect
- Chaos theory
- Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow
- Dynamical systems
- Linear statistical models
- Mathematician
- Non-linear
External links
- Edward Norton Lorenz @ Wikipedia
