Edward Lorenz; Pioneer in Creation of Chaos Theory Thursday,
April 17, 2008 Edward N. Lorenz, 90, a meteorologist who laid
the groundwork for chaos theory, memorably asking whether the
flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in
Texas, died of cancer April 16 at his home in Cambridge, Mass.
He was an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. At MIT, Dr. Lorenz accidentally discovered how small
differences in the early stages of a dynamic system, such as the
weather, can trigger such huge changes in later stages that the
result is unpredictable and essentially random. At the time, Dr.
Lorenz was studying why it's so hard to accurately forecast the
weather, but the implications of his work go far beyond
meteorology. The new science of chaos fundamentally changed the
way researchers address topics from the geometry of snowflakes
to the predictability of which movies will become blockbusters.
The butterfly effect became a popular way of describing
unpredictability, most r