Professor Slavik Vlado Jablan is affiliated to the Mathematical Institute, Academy of Sciences, Yugoslavia. He was the Fulbright scholar in 1992 and included in the International Who's Who of Intelectuals, International Bibliographical Centre, Cambridge, England in 1990.

This book discusses the origins of ornamental art — illustrated by the oldest examples, dating mostly from the paleolithic and neolithic ages, and considered from the theory-of-symmetry point of view. Because of its multidisciplinary nature, it will interest a wide range of readers: mathematicians, artists, art historians, architects, psychologists, and anthropologists.

The book represents the complete analysis of plane symmetry structures, so it can be used by artists as a guide to the creation of new symmetry patterns. Some parts of the contents (such as Chapter 4, about conformal symmetry, and Chapter 6, about modularity in art) give the reader an opportunity to develop computer programs for producing images illustrating the corresponding symmetry forms.

Contents:

• Theory of Isometric Symmetry Groups in E² and Ornamental Art
• Similarity Symmetry in E²
• Conformal Symmetry in E²\{O}
• The Theory of Symmetry and Ornamental Art
• Modularity in Art

"In Jablan's book one finds more than one normally expects from the title ... In a nutshell one finds, so to say, all: an algebraic and a geometric characterization, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, discrete and continuous transformations, graphs and tiling, classification, presentation and notation."