Fibonacci numbers and patterns in Cactus and Succulents ... 2/7

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He did this by introducing to western Europe the new numbering system that had been used in the Middle East & the Orient, and explaining it's superiority over the Roman Numerical system that had been taught throughout Europe before the 13th century.

All this brought widespread interest and hence importance to Fibonacci which brought him to the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor - Fredrick II (notice royalty sticks to roman numerals!), taking part in mathematical tournaments ordered by the Emperor.
Fibonacci went on to write about four more books, mainly solving mathematical riddles of the day - one of his most famous being the rabbit problem below and its sequence named after him (but about which he placed little importance in).

After 1228 there is only one known document which refers to Fibonacci, this is a decree in 1240 made by the republic of Pisa in which a salary is awarded to "the serious and learned Master Leonard Bigollo ... for services to the city on matters of accounting and teaching its citizens".

He has been described as the most outstanding western mathematician of the Middle Ages and a man very much in advance of his time, having profound influence on art, architecture, geometry and mathematics.


(Not everyone was happy with the new numbers and in 1299 Florentine merchants issued an ordinance prohibiting the use of Hindu-Arabic numbers as it was too easy for an unscrupulous person to fraudulently alter numbers (e.g. 99 to 88) which was near impossible in the Roman number system)

The Fibonacci sequence

Think of the mathematical problem: A pair of rabbits are enclosed in a yard. How many pairs of rabbits would there be each month, if it is supposed that every month each pair breeds and produces a new pair which from the second month on become reproductive?

The answer: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 ...

This is the Fibonacci sequence

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