The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
BENOIT MANDELBROTIf one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.
More Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes
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Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.
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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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The theory of chaos and theory of fractals are separate, but have very strong intersections. That is one part of chaos theory is geometrically expressed by fractal shapes.
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I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable
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There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
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Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion.
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When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.
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I spent my time very nicely in many ways, but not fully satisfactory. Then I became Professor in France, but realized that I was not – for the job that I should spend my life in.
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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.
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An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.
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In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.
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The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.
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Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
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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.
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The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
BENOIT MANDELBROT