Visual Symmetry. By Magdolna Hargittai and István Hargittai, World Scientific Publishing, 2009; 224 pages. Price: US48 / £ 36 ISBN 978-981-283-531-4

The following paragraphs are reproduced from the website of the publisher [1].

Symmetry is as simple or as complicated as we are ready to absorb it in everything around us. From flowers to bridges, buildings, coke machines, and snowflakes; from molecules to walnuts, fences, pine cones, and sunflowers; from music to children’s drawings; from hubcaps to bank logos, propellers, wallpaper decorations, and pavements, we recognize it if we walk around with open eyes and an open mind. This book provides aesthetic pleasure and covert education, immersing the reader in both the familiar and the unknown and leading always to unexpected discoveries.

The authors, world-renowned scientists, have already produced a dozen books on symmetry for professionals as well as lay persons, for grownups as well as children, in English, Russian, German, Hungarian, and Swedish languages. They provide this attractive account of symmetry in few words and many, as many as 650, images in full color from the most diverse corners of our globe. An encounter with this book will open up a whole new experience for the reader, who will never look at the world with the same eyes as before.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Mirror Symmetry

Chirality

Multiple Mirrors

Rotational Symmetry

Shape and Movement

Polyhedra

Repetitions

Helical Symmetry

Planar Patterns

Crystals

Antisymmetry

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

* Editor’s Note: The brief summary and the contents of the books are reported as provided by the authors or the publishers. Authors and publishers are encouraged to send review copies of their recent books of potential interest to readers of Symmetry to the Publisher (Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), Kandererstrasse 25, CH - 4057 Basel, Switzerland. Tel. +41 61 683 77 34; Fax: +41 61 302 89 18; E-mail: [email protected]). Some books will be offered to the scholarly community for the purpose of preparing full-length reviews.