Just a brief post to pass on the sad news of the death at the age of 86 of Benoit Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot is credited with having invented the term fractal to describe objects that possess the property of self-similarity and which have structure on arbitrarily small scales. In his marvellous book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot explored the use of fractals to describe natural objects and phenomena as diverse as clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snow flakes, plants, and animal coloration patterns. His ideas found application across the whole spectrum of physics and astrophysics including, controversially, cosmology. Fractal images, such as the one below of the Mandelbrot set, also found their way into popular culture; I had a poster of one on my bedroom wall when I was a student and kept it for many years thereafter.
I came across Mandelbrot’s book in the public library and found it truly inspirational, so much so that he became a scientific hero of mine. I was therefore thrilled at the prospect of meeting him when I myself had become a scientist and had the chance to go to a conference, in Paris, at which he was speaking. Unfortunately, I was deeply disappointed by his lecture, which was truly awful, and his personal manner, which I found less than congenial. Nevertheless, there’s no denying his immense contributions to mathematics and science nor his wider impact on culture and society. Another one of the greats has left us.
In the Dark 