Natures numbers: Photographs of ice crystals by Andrew Osokin.

The Russian photographer Andrew Osokin finds nature's beauty through a macro lens. This series of photographs reveals a variety of natural structures and numbers found in ice crystals. Some of the structures are familiar, like the flowers, but then he reveals structures that are perhaps more familiar in other contexts. For example there shapes resembling ferns, corals, hexagons, and even a peculiar tower shape. For me the interesting thing about the photographs, beyond their delicate aesthetic beauty, is the reminder that nature has order to it. The natural world has mathematical underpinnings. Whilst mathematics of natural occurrences are not fully understood, an understanding of the work of Leonardo of Pisa, otherwise known as Fibonacci seems to be a good place to start. His book Liber Abaci published in 1202 identified numbers that regularly occur in nature. These numbers became known as the Fibonacci series. Photographs via the curious brain.