Humanity has known for a long time what fractals are. It is a very strange situation in which an idea which each time I look at all documents have deeper and deeper roots, never (how to say it), jelled.
BENOIT MANDELBROTHumanity has known for a long time what fractals are. It is a very strange situation in which an idea which each time I look at all documents have deeper and deeper roots, never (how to say it), jelled.
BENOIT MANDELBROTWhy 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 MANDELBROTUnfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
BENOIT MANDELBROTI 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 MANDELBROTThe beauty of what I happened by extraordinary chance to put together is that nobody would have believed that this is possible, and certainly I didn’t expect that it was possible. I just moved from step to step to step.
BENOIT MANDELBROTI’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 MANDELBROTEverything 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 MANDELBROTThe Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.
BENOIT MANDELBROTNobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
BENOIT MANDELBROTI 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.
BENOIT MANDELBROTA fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
BENOIT MANDELBROTMy fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.
BENOIT MANDELBROTClouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
BENOIT MANDELBROTIn 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 MANDELBROTNow 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 MANDELBROTBottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.
BENOIT MANDELBROT