''This page was created from the Dutch Wikipedia with the aid of automatic translation'' WetenschappelijkAppel1948

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 municipality and town located in the province of South Holland, on the western coast of the Netherlands. An affluent suburb of The Hague, Wassenaar lies north of that city on the N44/A44 highway near the Nort ...

, 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". Professor ...

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 alternat ...

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 Microbiology () is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being unicellular (single cell), multicellular (cell colony), or acellular (lacking cells). Microbiology encompasses numerous sub-disciplines including virology, bacteriology, ...

under Martinus Willem Beijerinck. He got a PhD in 1907 with a thesis on

, 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 alternat ...

" 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 am ...

Hortus Botanicus. In 1918 he became a member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. He retired in 1948.

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

Biography

See also

Bibliography

External links

References