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I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.

Benoit Mandelbrot

The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Choices Discipline Intellectual
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

Definitions Simple Years
Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Pleasure Realizing Years
Order doesn’t come by itself.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Come Itself Order
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - A fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales…$

A fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales…
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Definitions Scales Science
In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Country Numbers Problem School
A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complexity Formulas Simple
There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complex Far Away Shapes
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
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
An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Arrogance Claims Firsts
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Facts Observation Order Science
One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Luck Persistence Reward
I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Different Mathematician Uncles Want
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.$

I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Half Shapes Two
My life has been extremely complicated. Not by choice at the beginning at all, but later on, I had become used to complication and went on accepting things that other people would have found too difficult to accept.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Choices Complicated People

I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.

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I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.

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Popular Authors

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