Historical Figures Codexery

Benoit Mandelbrot

The father of fractals who found order in roughness

Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician who coined the term "fractal" and developed a theory of roughness and self-similarity in nature.[1] He died of pancreatic cancer on 14 October 2010 in a hospice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2][3]

Quick Facts

Birth name
Benedykt Mandelbrot
Born
20 November 1924
Birthplace
Warsaw, Poland
Died
14 October 2010
Place of death
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Fields
Mathematics, Aerodynamics
Education
  • École Polytechnique
  • California Institute of Technology
  • University of Paris
Thesis year
1952

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

He studied at the École Polytechnique from 1945 to 1947 under mathematicians Gaston Julia and Paul Lévy.[4] Mandelbrot earned a master's degree in aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1949.[4] Mandelbrot coined the term "fractal" in 1975, from the Latin word "fractus" meaning broken or shattered.[5][6] He first visualized the Mandelbrot set on 1 March 1980 at IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Centre.[7]

Benoit Mandelbrot's birthplace was Warsaw, and he was born in 1924 to a family of Lithuanian Jewish heritage.[8][6] At age 11, in 1936, his family left Poland and moved to France.[9] The University of Paris awarded him a PhD in Mathematical Sciences in 1952.[4] Starting in 1958, he worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center for a period of 35 years.[10]

At Yale University, Mandelbrot held the Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences position; his first tenured academic appointment came in 1999 when he was 75 years old.[11][12]

What the cited sources add

A BBC report states Mandelbrot was highly critical of the world banking system, arguing its economic model could not cope with its own complexity.[3] The Jewish Daily Forward notes Mandelbrot coined the terms "Noah Effect" and "Joseph Effect" in the 1960s, inspired by the Old Testament.[6] The same source reports that Mandelbrot's fractal images were described as combining "the delirious exuberance of 1960s psychedelic art with forms hauntingly reminiscent of nature and the human body"[6][5] The Guardian obituary recounts that Mandelbrot developed an algorithm at IBM in 1973 using a makeshift computer with a minute memory to generate pictures imitating natural landforms.[7]

The obituary also states Mandelbrot observed that the degree of bunching in cotton prices remained constant whether plotted by month, week, or day.[7]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Remembering the Father of Fractals", 22 October 2010; Mandelbrot, "Fractals and the art of roughness", TED.com, February 2010; Hudson & Mandelbrot, Prelude, page xviii; Mandelbrot, "The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick", Pantheon Books, 2012; Gomory, "Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010)", Nature, 2010, p. 378 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hoffman, "Benoît Mandelbrot, Mathematician, Dies at 85", The New York Times, 16 October 2010; "Benoît Mandelbrot, fractals pioneer, dies", United Press International, 16 October 2010; Hoffman, "Benoît Mandelbrot, Mathematician, Dies at 85", The New York Times, 16 October 2010 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. "'Fractal' mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot dies aged 85", BBC Online, 17 October 2010. facts only, no text reused. bbc.co.uk
  4. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lesmoir-Gordon, "Benoît Mandelbrot obituary", The Guardian, 17 October 2010; Mandelbrot, "The Wolf Prizes for Physics, A Maverick's Apprenticeship", Imperial College Press, 2002 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ivry, "Benoit Mandelbrot Influenced Art and Mathematics", The Jewish Daily Forward, 17 November 2012 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Ivry, "Benoit Mandelbrot Influenced Art and Mathematics", The Jewish Daily Forward, 17 November 2012. facts only, no text reused. forward.com
  7. Lesmoir-Gordon, "Benoît Mandelbrot obituary", The Guardian, 17 October 2010. facts only, no text reused. theguardian.com
  8. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Gołąb-Meyer, "Benoit Mandelbrot (1924–2010) – ojciec geometrii fraktalnej", Foton, Spring 2011, p. 50; Hoffman, "Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85 (Published 2010)", The New York Times, 16 October 2010 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mandelbrot, "The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick", Pantheon Books, 2012; "'Fractal' mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot dies aged 85", BBC Online, 17 October 2010 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mandelbrot, "Mathematical People, Interview of B. B. Mandelbrot", Birkhaüser, 1984; Mandelbrot, "Mathematical People, Interview of B. B. Mandelbrot", Birkhaüser, 1984; Mandelbrot, "The Wolf Prizes for Physics, A Maverick's Apprenticeship", Imperial College Press, 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  11. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mandelbrot, "Benoît Mandelbrot • IBM: background and policies", Web of Stories, May 1998; Tenner, "Benoît Mandelbrot the Maverick, 1924–2010", The Atlantic, 16 October 2010; Mandelbrot, "The fractalist: memoir of a scientific maverick", Vintage Books, 2013 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  12. Wikipedia, "Benoit Mandelbrot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Olson, "The Genius of the Unpredictable", Yale Alumni Magazine, November–December 2004 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Benoit Mandelbrot (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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