I was also saddened to learn, a few days ago, of Arnol'd's death. Although I never met him, I was first introduced to his work via the wonderfully fun book with Avez, "Ergodic Problems in Classical Mechanics" -- which is a compendium of interesting facts that, despite the intimidating title, require very little background to appreciate (more accurately, a bachelor's in math would easily do). Another beautiful book is his "Mathematical Methods in Classical Mechanics", whose first chapter shows how to make rough estimates of various aspects of an animal, like the speed it can run, in terms of its linear size S, . (For example, its volume is proportional to S^3.) One thing he mentioned is the power of S that the height an animal can jump is proportional to. Do you want to guess? --Dan << FYI -- Arnold was one of my favorite mathematicians; I really enjoyed his work on orbits. His (English translated) books are quite readable.
________________________________________________________________________________________ "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." --Groucho Marx