Edward N. Lorenz, the MIT meteorologist often called the father of chaos theory, has died of cancer at the age of 90. His 1972 AAAS talk “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” described the idea that has since come to be known as the “butterfly effect,” in which very small changes in the initial conditions of certain classes of dynamic systems lead to profoundly different outcomes. Lorenz’s work became widely popularized with the publication of James Gleick’s 1988 book Chaos: Making a New Science. Continue reading Captain of Chaos Theory Dies →