Aristid Lindenmayer (17 November 1925 – 30 October 1989) was a Hungarian

biologist A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...

. In 1968 he developed a type of

formal languages In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules. The alphabet of a formal language consists of sy ...

that is today called

L-system An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system and a type of formal grammar. An L-system consists of an alphabet of symbols that can be used to make strings, a collection of production rules that expand each symbol into som ...

s or Lindenmayer Systems. Using those systems Lindenmayer modelled the behaviour of cells of plants. L-systems nowadays are also used to model whole plants. Lindenmayer worked with

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...

and filamentous

fungi A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately fr ...

and studied the growth patterns of various types of algae, such as the blue/green bacteria ''Anabaena catenula''. Originally the L-systems were devised to provide a formal description of the development of such simple multicellular organisms, and to illustrate the neighbourhood relationships between plant cells. Later on, this system was extended to describe higher plants and complex branching structures.

Career

Lindenmayer studied chemistry and biology at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest from 1943 to 1948. He received his Ph.D. in

plant physiology Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology (structure of plants), plant ecology (interactions with the environment), phytochemistry (b ...

in 1956 at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. In 1968 he became professor in Philosophy of Life Sciences and Biology at the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, The Netherlands. From 1972 onward he headed the Theoretical Biology Group at Utrecht University.Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Martin de Boer (1991) Obituary Aristid Lindenmayer (1925-1989), ''Int. J. General Systems'', Vol 18, pp. 289-290 1991

Publications

*Aristid Lindenmayer, "Mathematical models for cellular interaction in development." ''J. Theoret. Biology,'' 18:280—315, 1968. * (available as a

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

)
Further publications

References

1925 births 1989 deaths Hungarian emigrants to the Netherlands Hungarian biologists Scientists from Budapest University of Michigan alumni Utrecht University faculty 20th-century biologists Hungarian expatriates in the United States {{Hungary-scientist-stub