Gerrit van Iterson
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''This page was created from the Dutch Wikipedia with the aid of automatic translation'' Gerrit van Iterson Jr (
Roermond Roermond (; li, Remunj or ) is a city, municipality, and diocese in the Limburg province of the Netherlands. Roermond is a historically important town on the lower Roer on the east bank of the river Meuse. It received town rights in 1231. Ro ...
, August 19, 1878 –
Wassenaar Wassenaar (; population: in ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and Dorp (town), town located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, on the western coast of the Netherlands. An affluent suburb of The ...
, January 4, 1972) was a Dutch botanist and
professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
who developed a mathematical approach to plant growth (
phyllotaxis In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature. Leaf arrangement The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...
).


Biography

Gerrit van Iterson studied in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnic in Delft from 1897 to 1901. He studied chemistry under H. Behrens and microbiology under
Martinus Willem Beijerinck Martinus Willem Beijerinck (, 16 March 1851 – 1 January 1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who was one of the founders of virology and environmental microbiology. He is credited with the discovery of viruses, which he called " ...
. He got a PhD in 1907 with a thesis on
phyllotaxis In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature. Leaf arrangement The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...
, where he fielded a mathematical theory for leaf growth (''Mathematical und Studien über microscopic anatomical Blattstellungen, etc.''). He also created a diagram that came to be called the van Iterson Diagram, based on his studies of how spheres can be arranged in a regular cylindrical pattern called a 'rhombic lattice'. Smith College's "About
Phyllotaxis In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature. Leaf arrangement The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...
" page notes that the van Iterson Diagram of plant growth is related to a tiling of the hyperbolic plane. The thesis was somewhat forgotten during the twentieth century, but since the recent work of Stéphane Douady and Yves Couder, it has gained attention. Iterson became professor at Delft. He was also the founder of the Cultuurtuin Technical Crops, today known as the
TU Delft Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...
Hortus Botanicus. In 1918 he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He retired in 1948.


See also

*
Tessellation A tessellation or tiling is the covering of a surface, often a plane, using one or more geometric shapes, called ''tiles'', with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellation can be generalized to higher dimensions and a variety o ...
*
Parastichy Parastichy, in phyllotaxy, is the spiral pattern of particular plant organs on some plants, such as areoles on cacti stems, florets in sunflower heads and scales in pine cones. These spirals involve the insertion of a single primordium. See al ...


Bibliography

* A.D.J. Meeuse
Life Message G. of Iterson
1972, Amsterdam, pp . 122-126


External links


Page about Gerrit van Iterson on the website of TU Delft

Mathematische und mikroskopisch-anatomische Studien über Blattstellungen. . .
1907, Google eBook edition of one of van Iterson's works


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iterson, Gerrit van 1878 births 1972 deaths Delft University of Technology faculty 20th-century Dutch botanists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences People from Roermond