Quasicrystals and Geometry

by Marjorie Senechal

Quasicrystals and Geometry brings together for the first time the many strands of contemporary research in quasicrystal geometry and weaves them into a coherent whole. The author describes the historical and scientific context of this work, and carefully explains what has been proved and what is conjectured. This, together with a bibliography of over 250 references, provides a solid background for further study. The discovery in 1984 of crystals with 'forbidden' symmetry posed fascinating and challenging problems in many fields of mathematics, as well as in the solid state sciences. Increasingly, mathematicians and physicists are becoming intrigued by the quasicrystal phenomenon, and the result has been an exponential growth in the literature on the geometry of diffraction patterns, the behaviour of the Fibonacci and other nonperiodic sequences, and the fascinating properties of the Penrose tilings and their many relatives.

302 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 1995

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Out of date by now, surely, since this book and I are the same age. But a really interesting story being told of a particular (and very exciting) moment in the field of crystal structures — discoveries of a periodic crystals and an opening of mathematical studies of tilings. I didn’t remember every definition and glossed over some of the details, but am probably at the best moment in my life to understand this right now and I enjoyed the read! Plus very good pictures!

[Amy Qualls]

I pulled this book through interlibrary loan though I wasn't sure if I'd get much out of it. I'm approaching quilting with tiling patterns from an artistic / application standpoint, not a mathematical one, and so a lot of the math in the tiling books isn't of use to me.

Scanned through it, verified this book was not particularly useful to me, and sent it back. I'm logging it, though, in case later on I wonder if I actually took a look at it or if I only meant to and never did.