Benoit Mandelbrot

Benoit Manderlbrot was the mathematician that developed the Theory of Fractals and who invented the “Fractal” word.

Benoit Mandelbrot Biography

Born: November 20, 1924, Warsand, Poland

Died: October 14, 2010, Cambridge,MA

Benoit Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 20, 1924. He described his father (1883-1952) as “a very scholarly person, and the descendant of long lines of scholars. In fact, it often seemed everyone in the family was—or was expected to become—a scholar of some kind, at least part-time. Unfortunately, many were starving scholars, and my father—being a practical man—saw virtues in a good steady job.” So Mandelbrot manufactured and sold clothing. He helped raise his youngest (by 16 years) brother, Szolem Mandelbrot, who later became a famous mathematician. His mother was a doctor. Afraid of epidemics, she tried to keep him out of school. His uncle Loterman, unemployed, was his tutor, and from him Mandelbrot mastered chess and maps and learned to read very fast. In 1929, when he was five, his uncle Szolem became professor at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France, and in 1938 at the Collège de France in Paris.

In 1936, while he was a child, Mandelbrot’s family emigrated to France from Poland. ended, Mandelbrot studied mathematics, graduating from universities in Paris and the United States and receiving a master’s degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He spent most of his career in both the United States and France, having dual French and American citizenship. In 1958, he began a 35-year career at IBM, where he became an IBM Fellow, and periodically took leaves of absence to teach at Harvard University.

At Harvard, following the publication of his study of U.S. commodity markets in relation to cotton futures, he taught economics and applied sciences.

In 1936, while he was a child, Mandelbrot’s family emigrated to France from Warsaw, Poland. After World War II ended, Mandelbrot studied mathematics, graduating from universities in Paris and the United States and receiving a master’s degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He spent most of his career in both the United States and France, having dual French and American citizenship. In 1958, he began a 35-year career at IBM, where he became an IBM Fellow, and periodically took leaves of absence to teach at Harvard University. At Harvard, following the publication of his study of U.S. commodity markets in relation to cotton futures, he taught economics and applied sciences.

Because of his access to IBM’s computers, Mandelbrot was one of the first to use computer graphics to create and display fractal geometric images, leading to his discovering the Mandelbrot set in 1980. He showed how visual complexity can be created from simple rules. He said that things typically considered to be “rough”, a “mess” or “chaotic”, like clouds or shorelines, actually had a “degree of order”. His math and geometry-centered research career included contributions to such fields as statistical physics, meteorology, hydrology, geomorphology, anatomy, taxonomy, neurology, linguistics, information technology, computer graphics, economics, geology, medicine, physical cosmology, engineering, chaos theory, econophysics, metallurgy and the social sciences.

Toward the end of his career, he was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University, where he was the oldest professor in Yale’s history to receive tenure.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. During his career, he received over 15 honorary doctorates and served on many science journals, along with winning numerous awards. His autobiography, The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick, was published posthumously in 2012.