René Thom is an enfant terrible. He achieved the highest mathematical honours for his work in topology.< > He went on to explore the implications of this work for the sciences, and achieved great fame a generation ago for his "catastrophe theory".< > But his later work was never really accepted by the scientific establishment.



His main book is called (in its English translation, which he revised) Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, and we shall discuss mainly the first chapter of this book.



GO BACK