Overview

In 1961 Edward Norton Lorenz (1917- ) demonstrated that as nonlinear deterministic systems evolve, they exhibit sensitive dependence on their initial conditions. This means that small changes in those conditions have large, unpredictable consequences. Lorenz was the first to emphasize the importance of identifying and studying such systems. His original research initiated the development of chaos theory, which has applications in fields ranging from astronomy and engineering to economics and medicine.

Background

Physical systems whose later states evolve from earlier ones according to fixed laws are deterministic systems. Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) Principia Mathematica embodied the belief that the natural world was a deterministic system—one whose behavior was governed by his equations of motion and...