Benoit Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot (born November 20, 1924) is a Polish-born French mathematician and leading proponent of fractal geometry.
Early years
Born in Warsaw, Poland, he lived in France from the age of 12 to the end of his college studies. Mandelbrot was born into a family with a strong academic tradition - his mother was a medical doctor and his uncle, Szolem Mandelbrojt, was a famous Parisian mathematician. His father, however, made his living buying and selling clothes. His family left Poland for Paris in the 1930s. There, Benoît was introduced to mathematics by his two uncles.
Educated in France at the École Polytechnique, he further developed the mathematics of Gaston Julia, and began the (now common) graphing of equations on a computer. Mandelbrot originated what is now known as fractal geometry, based on the 1905 work of mathematician Pierre Fatou, and the fractal called the Mandelbrot set is named after him.
Later years
In 1974 (France) and 1975 (world), Mandelbrot published Les objets fractals, forme, hasard et dimension ("The fractal objects, form, randomness and dimension"). His work on fractals as a mathematician at IBM earned him an Emeritus Fellowship at the T.J. Watson Research Laboratories. In addition to the discovery of fractals in mathematics, he showed that fractals can be found in many places in nature, leading to entire new fields of exploration in turbulence and also some aspects of chaos theory.
He joined the faculty of Yale in 1987. Mandelbrot was awarded the prestigious Japan Prize in 2003.
Language
In English, "Mandelbrot" is pronounced man-dull-bro. In Yiddish and German it is pronounced as mand'lbrot and the name means "almondbread". He also gave his name to The Mandelbrot Competition, the main competition in recreational mathematics. It is unclear if the competition is pronounced Man-dell-bro (as in French), Mand-dull-brot or otherwise.
See also
