The Golden Ratio

Photo: L. Shyamal

​In the mid- to late 1960s I was making paintings based on mathematical sequences (simple ones), and when I found out about the golden ratio it made an enormous impression on me. The thought that a single proportion (1 to 1.618, or in linear terms, a+b is to a as a is to b) and the related Fibonacci sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. (every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones) lay behind structures in art and nature such as ancient Greek architecture, sunflower seed patterns, the growth of shells, and human beings’ preferred rectangular proportion, was mind-boggling. Although the concept of the golden ratio as a universal law (and its use by ancient Greek architects) has been disputed, some scientists maintain that it is present at the atomic scale.