#Zebra pattern cracked#
#Zebra pattern code#

In particular his attention focused on morphogens - the then-unknown molecules in developing organisms that control their growing shape and structure.

Through a mathematical principle he called ‘reaction–diffusion’, these two components would spontaneously self-organise into spots, stripes, rings, swirls or dappled blobs. Like all the best scientific ideas, Turing’s theory was elegant and simple: any repeating natural pattern could be created by the interaction of two things - molecules, cells, whatever - with particular characteristics. Disk florets of yellow chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) with spirals indicating the arrangement drawn in. Gradually, his “mathematical theory of embryology”, as he referred to it, began to take shape. Luckily the very latest computer, a Ferranti Mark I, had just arrived in Manchester, and Turing soon put it to work crunching the numbers. Then came the equations - complex, unruly beasts that couldn’t be solved by human hands and brains. He set to work collecting flowers in the Cheshire countryside, scrutinising the patterns in nature. If a computer could be programmed to calculate, then a biological organism must also have some kind of underlying logic too. Perhaps, some thinkers concluded, the inner workings of life were fundamentally unknowable. Embryology - the science of building a baby from a single fertilized egg cell - had been a hot topic in the early part of the 20th century, but progress sputtered to a halt as scientists realized they lacked the technical tools and scientific framework to figure it out. Turing was quickly adopted into a gang of pioneering scientists and mathematicians known as the Ratio Club, where his ideas about artificial intelligence and machine learning were welcomed and encouraged.Īgainst this backdrop Turing took up a subject that had fascinated him since before the war. There was also a growing interest in cybernetics - the idea of living beings as biological computers that could be deconstructed, hacked and rebuilt. Researchers around the world were busy getting to grips with the nature of genes, and James Watson and Francis Crick would soon reveal the structure of DNA in 1953.

It was a good time to be excited about biology. This disconnect was probably intentional on Turing’s part, rather than deliberate exclusion on theirs, as his attention was drifting away from computing towards bigger questions about life. In theory he was there to develop programs for one of the world’s first electronic computers - a motley collection of valves, wires and tubes - but he found himself increasingly side-lined by greasy-fingered engineers who were more focused on nuts and bolts than numbers. The secret glory of Turing’s wartime success had faded by the 1950s, and he was holed up in the grimly industrial confines of the University of Manchester. Mockup of a bombe machine at Bletchley Park. In fact, it was an extension of his fascination with the workings of the mind and the underlying nature of life.

#Zebra pattern code#

More famous for cracking the wartime Enigma code and his contributions to mathematics, computer science and artificial intelligence, it may come as a surprise that Turing harbored such an interest. In 1952 a mathematician published a set of equations that tried to explain the patterns we see in nature, from the dappled stripes adorning the back of a zebra to the whorled leaves on a plant stem, or even the complex tucking and folding that turns a ball of cells into an organism.

#Zebra pattern cracked#

Where do a zebra’s stripes, a leopard’s spots and our fingers come from? The key was found years ago - by the man who cracked the Enigma code.