University of Maryland Chaos Web Home Page

    Chaos at Maryland

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.- Henri Poincaré.

Welcome to the Chaos Group at the University of Maryland at College Park! Chaos is a multidisciplinary science, and this is reflected in the fact that the members of the group are affiliated with diverse departments and institutions:

Department of Electrical Engineering
Department of Mathematics
Department of Physics
Institute for Physical Sciences and Technology (IPST)
Institute for Plasma Research (IPR)
Institute for System Research (ISR)

The idea that many simple nonlinear deterministic systems can behave in an apparently unpredictable and chaotic manner was first noticed by the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré. Other early pioneering work in the field of chaotic dynamics were found in the mathematical literature by such luminaries as Birkhoff, Cartwright, Littlewood, Levinson, Smale, and Kolmogorov and his students, among others. In spite of this, the importance of chaos was not fully appreciated until the widespread availability of digital computers for numerical simulations and the demonstration of chaos in various physical systems. This realization has broad implications for many fields of science, and it is only within the past decade or so that the field has undergone explosive growth. It is found that the ideas of chaos have been very fruitful in such diverse disciplines biology, economics, chemistry, engineering, fluid mechanics, physics, just to name a few.

Since the mid-1970s, the Chaos Group at Maryland has done extensive research in various areas of chaotic dynamics ranging from the theory of dimensions, fractal basin boundaries, chaotic scattering, controlling chaos, etc. It is hoped that the knowledge we have gained is of use to others, and it is the objective of this web site to disseminate those fruits of labor. Enjoy!!!

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