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

Benoit Mandelbrot

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

France Littles Training
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
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
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
If 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.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Able Colossal Fashion Kind Rewarded Risk
Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Fashion Happen Mathematics Strong
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
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.$

Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

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

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
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
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
Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Convenience Mathematician World
I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Academia Found Laboratory
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

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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