Summary
Pierre-François Verhulst was born 200 years ago. After a short biography of P.-F. Verhulst in which the link with the Royal Military Academy in Brussels is emphasized, the early history of the so-called “Logistic Model” is described. The relationship with older growth models is discussed, and the motivation of Verhulst to introduce different kinds of limited growth models is presented. The (re-)discovery of the chaotic behaviour of the discrete version of this logistic model in the late previous century is reminded. We conclude by referring to some generalizations of the logistic model, which were used to describe growth and diffusion processes in the context of technological innovation, and for which the author studied the chaotic behaviour by means of a series of computer experiments, performed in the eighties of last century by means of the then emerging “micro-computer” technology.
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Pastijn, H. (2006). Chaotic Growth with the Logistic Model of P.-F. Verhulst. In: Ausloos, M., Dirickx, M. (eds) The Logistic Map and the Route to Chaos. Understanding Complex Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-32023-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-32023-7_1
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