Six degrees of D'Arcy Thompson

A lot of scientists are interested in just how tightly linked communities are. One popular version of this idea is the pasttime sometimes called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," where the goal is to shows how many links there are between any actor and Kevin Bacon. If you're just curious and not a movie geek, type in the name of your favourite actor here.

An academic version of the game concerns wide-ranging and prolific mathematician Paul Erdos.

I recently mentioned I had a book on my desk by biologist D'Arcy Thompson, who died in 1948. My colleague Garry Jolley-Rogers informs me that I have a "Thompson number" of three. I did a post-doc with David Macmillan, who was a colleague of Michael Laverack, who knew D'Arcy Thompson.

Cool.