The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson’s Face

This mathematical tool - named the Fourier transform, after 18th-century French physicist and mathematician Joseph Fourier - was even used by James Watson and Francis Crick to decode the double helix structure of DNA from the X-ray patterns produced by Rosalind Franklin. (Crick was an expert in Fourier transforms, and joked about writing a paper called, “Fourier Transforms for birdwatchers,” to explain the math to Watson, an avid birder.)

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