Throughout human history the complex patterns that appear everywhere in nature have been cause for wonder and fascination. We are puzzled, for example, about how intricate snowflakes can form in plain air, and our minds boggle at the complexity of even the simplest living systems. Scientests have learned a great deal about natural pattern formation in recent years. Mostly, however, we have discovered how very much remains to be understood.

The Institute for Theoretical Physics is a U.S. National Science Foundation institute at UCSB. Over the course of each year the Institute brings to campus several hundred scientists from throughout the world to work together on problems at the frontier of modern science.