Chaos Theory

An individual must be both a gifted and exceptional human being in order to make a contribution to the mathematical and scientific world. However, to be considered to bring “about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton,” that individual must be of a rare breed of genius (Edward). Meteorologist Edward Lorenz is the recipient of this phenomenal comparison. Throughout his academic career, Lorenz has contributed various ideas to meteorology, mathematics, and science; however, Lorenz shocked the world when he stumbled upon the idea of chaos theory.

Perhaps it is a form of flattery that the world focuses more on Lorenz’s ideas than his life itself. Nevertheless, there are shockingly few resources available on his life or how specifically he discovered chaos theory. The little information that does exist on him is usually found in introductions to what chaos theory is. The Harcourt School offers a very brief and somewhat sporadic biography on his life and his accomplishments. However, it offers very little details on his actual work on chaos theory. On the other hand, ThinkQuest offers a very detailed explanation on how Lorenz was able to stumble upon chaos theory, but offers no other background information on his life. By combining these two sources, however, a more comprehensive view can be gathered.

Born on May 23, 1917 in West Haven, Connecticut, Edward Lorenz pursued a life of academia and research, studying mathematics at both Dartmouth College and Harvard University (Edward). He put this learning to use during World War II, where he served as a weather forecaster for the United States Army Air Corps (Edward). It is here where his interest in meteorology began to spark. After the war, Lorenz studied the topic and earned two degrees in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Edward). He later became a professor at the school, where he stumbled upon one of the most important mathematical and scientific discovers in recent history.

While as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute in 1961, Lorenz was researching weather predicting methods. He had programmed twelve equations into a computer that was supposed to predict what the weather might be. On one particular day, Lorenz wanted to see a particular sequence again, and in order to save time, started it in the middle rather than the beginning (History). He checked on it an hour later, and was shocked to see that the sequence had advanced much differently than it had previously. “Instead of the same pattern as before, it diverged from the pattern, ending up wildly different from the original” (History). After meticulous examination, Lorenz eventually discovered what exactly had happened. In the original sequence, Lorenz had typed in the number .506127, yet in the rerun, he had only typed in .506.

The difference was only .000127, and “by all conventions of the time, it should have worked” (History). Many scientists at the time believed that achieving an accurate measurement to three decimal places was not only highly adequate, but lucky too. It was thought that the following decimal places, which were nearly impossible at the time to measure, could not largely affect the outcome of an experiment. Nevertheless, Lorenz proved this train of thought to be wrong.

Lorenz’s discovered effect came to be known as the butterfly effect; “just a small change in the initial conditions can drastically change the long-term behavior of a system…such a small amount of difference in a measurement might be considered experimental noise, background noise, or an inaccuracy