Evolutionary Mathematics of the Hottie

Not withstanding that subtle blemish that lends effect most people would agree that harmony and proportion are key elements of human physical beauty.

Stephen Marquardt research finds a surprising mathematical exactitude in this part of erotic aesthetics and attempts to corrleate it with evolutionary theory.

Marquardt’s work has an artistic spin to it. Like Euclid, Leonardo da Vinci and Le Corbusier before him, the doctor became fascinated with the possibility that beauty itself could be quantified. His instincts told him that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. “I didn’t find that to be true,” he explains in an interview. “Guys seem to agree. They may argue over whether they prefer Michelle Pfeiffer or Kim Basinger, but you never hear anyone say Roseanne Barr.” He had always been mathematically inclined, so, beginning in the early 1970s, Marquardt set out to compile the measurements of beautiful faces. He focused on people who were paid for being attractive — movie stars and face models. His colleagues scoffed: “Every doctor I talked to told me I was nuts,” he recalls.

Our obsession with physical appearance may not be so shallow, after all