'Da vinci code' of fertility cracked?

LONDON: Scientists have discovered that the 'golden ratio' of 1.618 made popular in 'the Da Vinci code' by Dan Brown could be a key to identifying the most fertile wombs.

A Belgian gynaecologist has found that the golden ratio may even apply to our bodies internally as women with mathematically perfect wombs were the most fertile, the Daily Mail reported.

The number 1.618 has been taken from the famous Fibonacci sequence.

In this sequence each number is the sum of the previous two, so it being 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. If you take two successive numbers their ratio is very close to 1.618.

This ratio is the key to everything from encrypting computer data, to the numbers of spirals on a sunflower head, our own limbs and why the Mona Lisa is so pleasing to the eye.

Dr Jasper Verguts, from the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, theorised that women would be most fertile if they had a uterus of perfect proportions. By this he meant a womb where the ratio of length to width is 1.618.

He measured the wombs of 5,000 women using ultrasound and drew up a table of the average ratio of length to width for different age bands.

Verguts found that the ratio is around two at birth but this decreases as women age to 1.46.

The age when women are most fertile on average - between the ages of 16 to 20 - the ratio was 1.6.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at this, so I am pleased it turned out so nicely," Verguts told the Guardian.

The ratio of 1.618 has already been found externally all over the human body. It usually marks the proportion of your hand to your forearm and your outstretched arms to your height.

The spiral numbers in a sunflower will always total a Fibonacci number, while dividing those pointing right and left will give you two consecutive Fibonacci numbers linked by the ratio 1.68. These spiral patterns are also found in pineapples, cauliflowers and pine cones.

The number of petals in most flowers also follow the sequence. So an iris has three, a primrose has five, a delphinium eight, a ragwort 13, an aster 21 and daises 13, 21, or 34.

The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian born around 1170 who popularised the concept in the West.