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In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

Benoit Mandelbrot

There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Needs Nice Pieces
I’ve been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I’m not a mathematician only. I’m a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lists Long Yale
Everything is roughness, except for the circles. How many circles are there in nature? Very, very few. The straight lines. Very shapes are very, very smooth. But geometry had laid them aside because they were too complicated.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Circles Lines Shapes
Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lying Mountain Nature Science Tree
Engineering is too important to wait for science.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Engineering Important Waiting
Some mathematicians didn’t even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds; the machines became a little bit better.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Helpful Littles Machines
Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Deny Everywhere Roughness
I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Academia Found Laboratory
A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don’t get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Clouds Looks Smooth
I went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Computer Levels Mathematics
I don’t seek power and do not run around
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Around Power Run Running Seek
Although computer memory is no longer expensive, there’s always a finite size buffer somewhere. When a big piece of news arrives, everybody sends a message to everybody else, and the buffer fills
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Memories News Pieces Somewhere
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.$

When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Field Hands People
The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lines Pieces Self
Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Branches Color Thinking
For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Interest Life Thing Wanted

In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

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In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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