In an early chapter of his interesting new book, Symmetry: A Journey Into the Patterns of Nature, Marcus du Sautoy describes a visit to the Alhambra, the great Moorish palace in Granada, Spain. He and ...

Symmetry abounds in nature, often in its most beautiful forms. A perfect snowflake, a blooming sunflower, a light-harvesting complex from a bacterium—they all exhibit striking symmetry, crafted by ...

Mirroring the mechanisms that make human faces and bodies—and those of many multicellular organisms—symmetrical, bee colonies build symmetrical nests when they are placed on either side of a ...