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Benoit Mandelbrot Has Passed Away

The mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot has passed away 14 October at the age of 85. Mandelbrot is primarily known as the father of fractal geometry, but he has also made significant contributions to the study of financial time series.

In 1987, while I was still in high school, I visited an exhibition at Utrecht University about fractals and chaos. I attended a talk by the Dutch mathematician Fred van der Blij and left thinking that I had a pretty good grasp of what chaos theory and fractal geometry were about until I got home and realized that my notes no longer made much sense.

I went on to take an advanced class in chaos theory and dynamical systems at university. I re-encountered the work of Mandelbrot several times in my career: both in my work in finance and through my own involvement with art and mathematics.

One of the most famous fractals is the Mandelbrot set. Back in the days rendering the bloody thing on a Commodore 64 took forever. Nowadays you can zoom in down to the level of e.214 which the nerd in me gets really excited about.

Links

New York Times obituary.

Le Monde obituary and profile.

His life in his own words. (Must read if you can spare the time). I guess I'm also some kind of a maverick.