Mandelbrot fractals

by YankeeJim | October 18, 2010 at 01:37 pm

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What a wonderful tribute. He’s out there, joining the numbers in a magnificent pattern.

“Benoît B. Mandelbrot[note 1][note 2] (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American citizenship.

Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot extensively popularized his work, writing books and giving lectures aimed at the general public.

Mandelbrot spent most of his career at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and was appointed as an IBM Fellow. He later became Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences atYale University. Mandelbrot also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.”

“The beautiful mathematics that Benoit Mandelbrot left as his legacy

SOURCE: http://io9.com/5666323/the-mathematical-art-that-benoit-mandelbrot-left-as-his-legacy/gallery/

Benoit Mandelbrot, who died last week at 85, was to math what Carl Sagan was to astrophysics. He wasn't just a researcher; he popularized scientific thought. And he's best known for bringing fractal mathematics to the masses.

Mandelbrot's experiments with number sets and computers in the 1970s led to his discovery that you could draw geometric shapes that were "self similar," which is to say each of their parts shares similarities with the whole. (This is why, for example, when you look at a Mandelbrot fractal, you see the same shapes emerging at its edges as you zoom into it.) His great insight was to group a number of similar kinds of mathematical phenomena together and identify them all as part of fractal mathematics. By using fractals, mathematicians and physicists could much more easily explain "rough" shapes in the real world, ranging from mountain ranges to the shapes of trees. They could also simulate those shapes too.

In 1982, Mandelbrot published The Fractal Geometry of Nature, which popularized the idea the natural world was organized by elegant, mathematical principles that could be predicted. He worked tirelessly to make his work accessible to a broad audience, which is why the fractal is perhaps one of the most widely-recognized mathematical ideas of the past half-century. Nearly everyone can recognize a fractal when they see it. Here are some gorgeous examples of fractal art, from the Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest.

http://io9.com/5666323/the-mathematical-art-that-benoit-mandelbrot-left-as-his-l...