When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. The Harvard graduate student in physics was fascinated by the beautiful and ...

Islamic architects and mathematicians were creating quasi-crystalline patterns some 500 years before similar patterns were described in the West, claim two physicists in the US. Peter J Lu of Harvard ...

The complex geometrical designs used centuries ago in Islamic art and architecture were planned with a tiling system that was not discovered in the West until five centuries later, two physicists have ...

Medieval Islamic designers used elaborate geometrical tiling patterns at least 500 years before Western mathematicians developed the concept. The geometric design, called “girih”, was widely used to ...

Remember the graph paper you used at school, the kind that's covered with tiny squares? It's the perfect illustration of what mathematicians call a "periodic tiling of space", with shapes covering an ...

Sheema Khan is the author of Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman. This year’s Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Roger Penrose, Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel for their ...

Ah, tiles. You can get square ones, and do a grid, or you can get fancier shapes and do something altogether more complex. By and large though, whatever pattern you choose, it will normally end up ...