Douglas D. Peden was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1933. Peden’s high school education was concentrated in an engineering preparatory curriculum. His undergraduate studies were in Aeronautical Engineering and graduate studies in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Michigan. Feeling a necessity to earn a living, he abandoned his graduate studies to secure a job as a nuclear reactor design engineer for Atomic Power & Development Associates (APDA) in Detroit, Michigan, where he worked on the first fast breeder reactor, helping to solve some of its many problems. However, an introduction to the world of art, music, and literature at the university, inspired a passion, possessing him to eventually leave APDA and the engineering profession and pursue a career in painting. He and his growing family moved to Colorado where he subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA 1965) from the University of Colorado, and stayed at Colorado as an Instructor for a year before accepting a position as Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Nebraska Wesleyan University. While teaching at Colorado and NWU he was affiliated with various galleries, including the Phyllis Kind Gallery which was at that time in Chicago. He entered various art exhibits and art competitions, receiving numerous awards and purchase prizes, even though he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of art competitions, as he felt that art has nothing to do with "winning," especially when it is judged much of the time on a personal bias. However, within the brief period of two years, he had won awards in five major mid-western exhibitions, including the National Small Painting Show at the University of Omaha (purchase award); The 30th Annual Fall Show (purchase award) at the Sioux City Art Center, Iowa; Mid America I (Hallmark purchase award) at the W. R. Nelson Gallery of Art/City of St. Louis. Also, in 1967 he received two U. S. Office of Education grants to develop an original idea combining painting, color, and cinematography. Though Peden enjoyed teaching and the intimacy of a small university, he left the academic world in 1970, because of "the growing bureaucratic pressures"; he also withdrew from the Phyllis Kind Gallery even though several pieces had been sold. And, with his wife and two children, moved to the seclusion of the Adirondack mountain region of New York, where he found the natural beauty and solitude supportive of his creative needs, and also allowed him to pursue his own vision "without the distraction and influence of the prevailing art fashions, fads, competitions, and market forces." To support himself and his family, he subsequently became a carpenter, plumber, house painter, photographer and cartoonist for a regional paper, photo processor (in the production of slide sets of American Art for The Dunlap Society),church sexton, substitute science and art teacher at the local high school and art instructor at the Lake Placid School of Art. With this, and with the physical and moral support of his family and friends, he has managed to survive and paint; and, with the advent of his mathematical and scientific studies and discoveries, to continue on "a creative journey."

Peden, Douglas: (1998) Bridges of Mathematics, Art, and Physics,
Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science,
(ed. Reza Sarhangi) Gilliland Printing, Arkansas City, Kansas, USA, pp 73-83. 

Peden, Douglas: (1999) "GridField Form & Patterning"
Forma, Vol. 14 No. 4, (ed. R. Takaki) KTK Scientific Publishers/Tokyo, pp347-354. 

Peden, Douglas: (2002) "GridField Geometry",
Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science, (ed. Reza Sarhangi)
Central Plain Book Manufacturing, Winfield, Kansas, pp 117-123. 

Peden, Douglas: (Fall 2003) "The Influence of Music and Mathematics in My Art"
Sonus, (ed. Pozzi Escot) Persuasive Press, Cambridge, MA, Vol.24, No. 1, pp 51-64. 

Peden, Douglas: (2004) "Wave Space Art", Leonardo
( Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology)
Vol. 37, No. 5, pp 376-381. 

Peden, Douglas: "The sounds of silence: My art as music and meaning"
Symmetry: Art and Science – 2004 / 1-4 

Peterson, Ivars: (2001) Fragments of Infinity,
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York. 

Peterson, Ivars:  Art of the Grid.
Science News Online