Nature: This week the world’s oldest scientific society still in existence, Britain’s Royal Society, is throwing parties, staging TV debates, holding public lectures, and otherwise celebrating its 350th birthday. In a news feature, Nature‘s Colin Macilwain examines how the society has changed from the age of Isaac Newton to the age of Stephen Hawking.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.