'Fractal' mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot dies aged 85

Jeebizz · 10-17-2010, 03:53 PM

Quote:

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11560101

Benoit Mandelbrot, who discovered mathematical shapes known as fractals, has died of cancer at the age of 85.

Mandelbrot, who had joint French and US nationality, developed fractals as a mathematical way of understanding the infinite complexity of nature.

The concept has been used to measure coastlines, clouds and other natural phenomena and had far-reaching effects in physics, biology and astronomy.

Mandelbrot's family said he had died in a hospice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The visionary mathematician was born into a Jewish family in Poland but moved to Paris at the age of 11 to escape the Nazis.

He spent most of his life in the US, working for IBM computers and eventually became a professor of mathematical science at Yale University.

His seminal works, Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension and The Fractal Geometry of Nature, were published in 1977 and 1982. In these, he argued that seemingly random mathematical shapes in fact followed a pattern if broken down into a single repeating shape.

The concept enabled scientists to measure previously immeasurable objects, including the coastline of the British Isles, the geometry of a lung or a cauliflower.

"If you cut one of the florets of a cauliflower, you see the whole cauliflower but smaller," he explained at the influential Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference earlier this year.

"Then you cut again, again, again, and you still get small cauliflowers. So there are some shapes which have this peculiar property, where each part is like the whole, but smaller."

'Powerful mind'

Fractal mathematics also led to technological developments in the fields of digital music and image compression.

It has also been influential in pop culture, with the patterns being used to create beautiful and intricate pieces of art. One such design is named in his honour.

Mandelbrot was also highly critical of the world banking system, arguing the economic model it used was unable to cope with its own complexity.

In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Mandelbrot for his "powerful, original mind that never shied away from innovation and battering preconceived ideas".

"His work, which was entirely developed outside the main research channels, led to a modern information theory," he said.

...And now a Mandelbrot Fractal using XaoS, Mandelbrot forumala^5.

MrCode · 10-17-2010, 04:14 PM

Fractals are cool and all, and it's sad to hear about Mandelbrot's death (

), but sometimes they get me all existentially anxious ("oh great, we're having broccoli with dinner tonight...here we go again: all of nature is one big fractal; my behavior is determined, ultimately, by Z = Z² + C."

).

unSpawn · 10-17-2010, 04:40 PM

Without Mandelbrot (OK, and assorted substances) those FSOL videos wouldn't have been that ultra-psychedelic. May he Live Forever.

bgeddy · 10-21-2010, 01:01 PM

I too was saddened by Benoit's demise - in saying that he did have a good innings though. I studied his work with great interest many years ago and wrote an 8088 assembler program to calculate and display a monochrome Mandelbrot set on a Victor Sirius under CP/M. That took ages both to write and to run, (Ok - so I'm old)

.

Quote:

Without Mandelbrot (OK, and assorted substances) those FSOL videos wouldn't have been that ultra-psychedelic.

Hey - I never really thought about those FSOL videos being based on his stuff (along with The Orb's videos any many others). I used to stare at those for ages back in the day - but enough said about that

. FSOL are still one of my all time favourite bands - "Papua New Guinea" - absolute classic.

To anyone whose not familiar with his stuff I recommend checking it out as much of it is fascinating - (albeit in a very "geeky" kind of way). The xfractint application is a good start.

igadoter · 10-23-2010, 04:10 AM

It is not Mandelbrot who discovered first 'fractal's. eg. there is a Cantor's curve (a graph of a some very specific function - Cantor's function), Sierpinski's carpet (also appears in screensavers). Fractal comes form 'a set of fractional dimension' say a line has dimension 1, a plane has dimension 2, etc. Fractal can have dimension eg. 1.2.

Jeebizz · 10-23-2010, 09:44 AM

This story didn't imply that he was the first to discover fractals, however he did come up with unique fractal formulas.

igadoter · 10-23-2010, 10:41 AM

Sorry, but what do you mean by uniq fractal formulas? Even a linear plane map can generate a 'fractal'. Mandelbrot
is well known first of all for conjectures about 'fractal' structure of the nature. There are things, phenomena in the nature which has a 'fractal' structure (eg. a tree). Mathematically Mandelbrot's 'fractal's are not really sophisticated. How to say, hm, there are in fact simple.