Seeing the music in nature
If anyone were going to discover the connections between molecular structures, mathematical concepts and musical scores, it’s not surprising that Markus Buehler would be the one. He has built his career on bridging the connections between disparate disciplines, asking simple questions as an approach to understanding the world. Buehler grew up around engineering: His father is a mechanical engineer, his mother worked in the automotive industry and his two brothers became engineers as well (one mechanical, one computer). During his youth, Buehler was drawn to understanding how things worked, and started designing and building electronic circuits when he was about 11. Soon after, he began writing programs to regulate common things around his house, such as the household’s solar-panel system for heating water and his electric train setup, automating the switching of tracks. Later, he wrote programs that simulated the dynamics of stock trading.In addition to building things, Buehler says,...