How the "golden ratio" made popular by Dan Brown could reveal the most fertile wombs.
Study suggests women with mathematically perfect wombs are the most fertile, based on the "golden ratio"
of 1.618, which comes from the Fibonacci number sequence.
Fans of the Da Vinci Code will remember when the protagonist Professor Langton explains how mathematics
and art collide via the "Gilden Ratio".
For those who haven't read the populist thriller, it's is the number 1,618 which has been plucked from the
famous Fibonacci sequence.
In this sequence each number is the sum of the previous two, so it being 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34. If you take
two successive numbers their ratio is very close to 1,618.
This isn't impressive on its own, until you realise that this ratio is the key to everything from encrypting
computer data, to the numbers of spirals on a sunflower head, our own limbs and why Mona Lisa is so
pleasing to the eye.
Now a Belgian gynaecologist has found this ratio may even apply to our bodies internally.
Dr Jasper Verguts, from the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, theorised that women would be most
fertile if they had a uterus of perfect proportions. By this he meant a womb where the ratio of length to
width. is 1.618.
He measured the womb of 5,000 women using the ultrasound and drew up a table of the average ratio of
length of the average ratio of length to width for different age bands.
Dr Verguts found that the ratio is around two at birth but this decreases as women age to 1.46.
He was delighted to find that the age when women are most fertile on average-between the ages
of 16 to 20- the ratio was 1.6.
Speaking to Alex Bellos at The Gaurdian, he said: "This is the first time anyone has looked at this,
so I am pleased it turned out nicely."
Some have argued that because the sequence seems to grow in a "organic" way, the golden ratio
may play a part in nature.
The ratio of 1.618 has already been found externally all over the human body. It usually marks
the proportion of your hand to your forearm as well as the distance your three knuckles on each
finger.
The spiral numbers in a sunflower will always total a Fibonacci number,while dividing those
pointing right and left will give you two consecutive Fibonacci numbers linked by the ratio
1.68. These spiral patterns are also found in pineapples, cauliflowers and pine cones.
The number of petals in most flowers also follow the sequence. So an Itis has 3, a primrose, has
5, a delphinium 8, a ragwort 13, an aster 21 and daisies 13, 21, or 34!
The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian born around 1170 who
popularised the concept in the West.
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