Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85 Feature Summary
- From Physics Research
Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85
- This famous fractal is the Mandelbrot set. Click to make the image larger, and look at the boundary between the black and blue--it is made up of the larger image, at smaller and smaller scales. Check out this Fractal Geometry page from IBM, especially the video (scroll down) that zooms in on the Mandelbrot set.
The image is named for Benoît B. Mandelbrot, who made it by graphing a set of complex numbers described by an equation. He coined the term "fractal" and popularized fractal research by showing its importance to other fields besides mathematics. Read more about his life and accomplishments at Benoît Mandelbrot, Novel Mathematician, Dies at 85.
- image credit: Wolfgang Beyer (Wikimedia Commons); image source; larger image
- Image URL:
- August 2, 2011 - August 17, 2011