Skip to content
logarithmic spiral

File:Logarithmic_Spiral_Pylab.svg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ724944· pop 45· linked from 159 articles

logarithmic spiral

Sign in to save

self-similar growth spiral whose curvature pattern appears frequently in nature

~12 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Logarithmic spiral (pitch 10°) A section of the Mandelbrot set following a logarithmic spiral

A logarithmic spiral, equiangular spiral, or growth spiral is a self-similar spiral curve that often appears in nature. The first to describe a logarithmic spiral was Albrecht Dürer (1525) who called it an "eternal line" ("ewige Linie"). More than a century later, the curve was discussed by Descartes (1638), and later extensively investigated by Jacob Bernoulli, who called it Spira mirabilis, "the marvelous spiral".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “logarithmic spiral” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (11)