Benoit Mandelbrot

Google Doodle is celebrating the 96th birthday of Benoit Mandelbrot, the Polishborn mathematician who discovered fractals, the irregular yet infinitely repeating patterns in nature. Mandelbrot won numerous awards for his work, one of which was the Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics in 1993. A small asteroid was named after him also: The 27500 Mandelbrot.

He was an early pioneer in using computers and worked at the International Business Machines Corporation in New York. Using the latest computer technology at that time, he created fractal images, incorporating elements of nature and the human body into his designs.

Mandelbrot was born on this day in 1924 in Warsaw, Poland to parents of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage. From being a local chess champion to a student of his father’s map collection, at a young age Mandelbrot was exposed to mathematics and geometry in everyday life. In 1936 the family emigrated to France, and Mandelbrot went on to pursue his education in both Paris and the US, culminating in a doctorate in 1952. During his childhood, he was keenly interested in mathematics, seeing geometry in everything. This power of observation led him to develop a new form of geometry called fractal geometry. The term was coined in 1975 as a new branch of geometry.

The development of an algorithm modeled after landforms found in nature led him to publish his famous book in 1982, “The Fractal Geometry of Nature.” His breakthrough paved the way for many other fields to flourish under the new information, including physics, finance, geology, arts, and medicine.

His patterns also became a popular design in pop culture, as well as the inspiration behind a song by Jonathan Coulton called “Mandelbrot Set.” His theories inspired author Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the novel, “The Colours of Infinity: The Beauty, and the Sense of Fractals.”

The genius mathematician died at the age of 85.