One of the biggest mathematical holidays of the year, Fibonacci Day is celebrated on 23 November. In the date format used by the United States among others, the 23th of November is written as 11/23, a Fibonacci sequence.
It is an annual holiday to celebrate one of the Middle Ages’ best mathematicians, Leonardo Bonacci, popularly known as ‘Fibonacci’. He discovered his famous Fibonacci sequence by devising a simple puzzle about rabbit population. In his book Liber acaci, Fibonacci posed this puzzle: if there are a pair of newly born rabbits – male and female – in the field and if they are able to produce another pair of rabbits in their second month of life, how many pairs of rabbits will be there after a year?
One of the beauties of the Fibonacci sequence is that the series is evident all over the natural world. Petal arrangements in flowers, the ordering of leaves in plants, the shell of the nautilus, the DNA molecule and even hurricanes show patterns that correspond to the sequence. So, to celebrate Fibonacci day, try to add some fruit and vegetables, like Pineapple and Romanesco, that use the Fibonacci sequence into your meals and learn a bit more about the legacy of Leonardo of Pisa, another of his names.