Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz ' is a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 computer scientist

Computer scientist

A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

 who advanced the idea that Fibonacci number

Fibonacci number

In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers are the numbers in the following integer sequence:0,\;1,\;1,\;2,\;3,\;5,\;8,\;13,\;21,\;34,\;55,\;89,\;144,\; \ldots\; ....

s in nature can be in part understood as the expression of certain algebraic constraints on free group

Free group

In mathematics, a group G is called free if there is a subset S of G such that any element of G can be written in one and only one way as a product of finitely many elements of S and their inverses...

s, specifically as certain Lindenmayer grammars

L-system

An L-system or Lindenmayer system is a parallel rewriting system, namely a variant of a formal grammar, most famously used to model the growth processes of plant development, but also able to model the morphology of a variety of organisms...

. Prusinkiewicz's main work is on the modeling of plant growth through such grammars

Formal grammar

A formal grammar is a set of formation rules for strings in a formal language. The rules describe how to form strings from the language's alphabet that are valid according to the language's syntax...

.

Prusinkiewicz received his PhD

PHD

PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 from the Warsaw University of Technology

Warsaw University of Technology

The Warsaw University of Technology is one of the leading institutes of technology in Poland, and one of the largest in Central Europe. It employs 2,453 teaching faculty, with 357 professors . The student body numbers 36,156 , mostly full-time. There are 17 faculties covering almost all fields of...

 in 1978, and is currently a professor of Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 at the University of Calgary

University of Calgary

The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...

. Prusinkiewicz received the 1997 SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...

 Computer Graphics Achievement Award for his work.

External links

• Biography of Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz from the University of Calgary
  University of Calgary
  The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
  
  
• Laboratory website at the University of Calgary
  University of Calgary
  The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...