I became fascinated by plant development in the late 1970's, when trying to understand phyllotaxis. This led to a meeting  with a remarkable botanist named Tsvi Sachs, who was developing his ideas about vein formation and canalization of auxin flow. I tried to cast his ideas in the form of mathematical models, and to understand what kinds of cellular mechanisms would be needed to make them work. I also tried to gain some insight into the way auxin moves between and within cells, and to estimate some of the rate constants. Then I moved continents and changed fields.

I can recommend returning to a field after twenty-five years. Science often moves slowly, but there is generally a cumulative achievement, and in botany this has led to a remarkable transformation. Today we can see entities that were only surmised when I was previously involved with the subject. There is now a rich abundance of signalling molecules, transporters, regulatory networks and subcellular structures that promise to give us a much deeper understanding of plant development. I am presently trying to catch up on this quarter decade of discovery, and to gain some insights into the way auxin seemingly controls everything.

I include below some papers from my earlier engagement with botany, and two more recent ones. I also include a paper from my alternative life as a physicist. In it, Richard Jozsa and I investigate how much information you can get from a quantum computer without switching it on.