European Year of Creativity and Innovation

Symbols of scientific inquiry — a book bearing the spiral of Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170–1240), a compass, a test tube and a flask — alongside the three feathers of the Republic of San Marino and the country name "SAN MARINO"; above: the inscription "Creatività Innovazione"; the year 2009, the initials of designer Annalisa Masini and the "R" mintmark.

San Marino, the small landlocked state in central Italy and one of the oldest republics still in existence, pursues a remarkably independent cultural policy despite covering barely 62 square kilometres. The three towers on Monte Titano have stood since the Middle Ages for state independence - a self-image also reflected in the promotion of education and science. Leonardo Fibonacci fits into this context as the most significant mathematician of the European Middle Ages: born around 1180 in Pisa, Fibonacci lived at a time when northern Italy became a hub for the transfer of knowledge between Arab and European scholarship. His work "Liber Abaci" of 1202 introduced the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to the West, laying the foundation for modern arithmetic, commercial bookkeeping and mathematical analysis - a cultural achievement whose impact reached far beyond Italy's borders.

The sequence named after him, in which each number is the sum of its two predecessors, describes geometric proportions found in nature as much as in architecture, art and natural science. When the European Union proclaimed 2009 the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, it drew on exactly this idea: that scientific curiosity, analytical thinking and creative craftsmanship are not opposites but conditions for one another. San Marino took the theme year of 2009 as the occasion to issue its own 2-euro commemorative coin symbolically linking creativity and innovation.