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My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.

Benoit Mandelbrot

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
I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist’s life in France.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

France Littles Training
It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made which were theoretically completely artificial pictures based upon that one very simple idea. And this picture everybody views as being clouds.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Clouds Simple Views
If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Nature Past Science
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 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 MANDELBROT

Country Jobs Professor Realized Satisfactory Way
I didn’t feel comfortable at first with pure mathematics, or as a professor of pure mathematics. I wanted to do a little bit of everything and explore the world.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Firsts Littles Mathematician Pure World
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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Case Dull Self Shape Shapes
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.$

If you have a hammer, use it everywhere you can, but I do not claim that everything is fractal.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Claims Hammers Use
I had many books and I had dreams of all kinds. Dreams in which were in a certain sense, how to say, easy to make because the near future was always extremely threatening.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Book Dream Kind
Clouds 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 MANDELBROT

Circles Clouds Mountain
There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complex Far Away Shapes
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
Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Engineering May Science
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
Order doesn’t come by itself.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Come Itself Order

My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.

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My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.

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