Islamic Art

"Two years ago, Peter J. Lu, a doctoral student in physics at Harvard University, was transfixed by the geometric pattern on a wall in Uzbekistan. It reminded him of what mathematicians call quasi-crystalline designs. These were demonstrated in the early 1970s by Roger Penrose, a mathematician and cosmologist at the University of Oxford.

Mr. Lu set about examining pictures of other tile mosaics from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Turkey, working with Paul J. Steinhardt, a Princeton cosmologist who is an authority on quasi crystals and had been Mr. Lu’s undergraduate adviser. The research was a bit like trying to figure out the design principle of a jigsaw puzzle, Mr. Lu said in an interview.

In their journal report, Mr. Lu and Dr. Steinhardt concluded that by the 15th century, Islamic designers and artisans had developed techniques “to construct nearly perfect quasi-crystalline Penrose patterns, five centuries before discovery in the West.”

- In Medieval Architecture, Signs of Advanced Math

Here's the original paper, Peter J. Lu and Paul J. Steinhardt “Decagonal and Quasi-crystalline Tilings in Medieval Islamic Architecture,” Science