Benoît Mandelbrot, father of fractals, dead at 85

Mathematician Benoît B. Mandelbrot, who coined the term "fractals" and was the father of the branch of mathematical theory of which that concept is a key part, is dead at the age of 85.

There have been many fascinating applications of that theory to the analysis and processing of photographic images.

Here is the article from the New York Times (I hope that it does not require registration to view it):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html

Here is another source:

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/8...-the-father-of-fractal-geometry-has-died.html

Best regards,

Doug

I'm sorry to hear this.
I have spent hours exploring the Mandelbrot Set.

I am completely impervious to mathematics, but this guy was the only one that makes me read a scientific book. And I enjoyed that. Sorry about this...

Benoit Mandelbrot

I was saddened to hear this as well. I knew him quite well when we were both at IBM's Watson labs in Yorktown Heights, NY, and used to have lunch with him about once a week. Once the visual impact of fractals became clear he would always have a graphics expert working for him, and some of these, such as Richard Voss, went on to make outstanding contributions in their own right. So his impact on imaging is clear. But he also understood some of the hard to predict characteristics of long tails in finance long ago, and recent events have made it clear that he didn't get those ideas across nearly as well.

scott