On Growth and Form by D’arcy Wentworth Thompson

It is not the biologist with an inkling of mathematics, but the skilled and learned mathematician who must ultimately deal with such problems as are merely sketched and adumbrated here. I pretend to no math­e­mat­i­cal skill, but I have made what use I could of what tools I had; I have dealt with simple cases, and the math­e­mat­i­cal methods which I have introduced are of the easiest and simplest kind. Elementary as they are, my book has not been written without the help—the indispensable help—of many friends. Like Mr Pope translating Homer, when I felt myself deficient I sought assistance! And the experience which Johnson attributed to Pope has been mine also, that men of learning did not refuse to help me.