The New York Times brings us the sad news that Benoit Mandelbrot, famous mathematician and creator of the ‘fractal’, passes away Thursday after a bout with pancreantic cancer.
Dr. Mandelbrot traced his work on fractals to a question he first encountered as a young researcher: how long is the coast of Britain? The answer, he was surprised to discover, depends on how closely one looks. On a map an island may appear smooth, but zooming in will reveal jagged edges that add up to a longer coast. Zooming in further will reveal even more coastline.
“Here is a question, a staple of grade-school geometry that, if you think about it, is impossible,” Dr. Mandelbrot told The New York Times earlier this year in an interview. “The length of the coastline, in a sense, is infinite.”
I’m sure everyone in computer graphics has played with a Mandelbrot fractal generator. RIP.
via Benoit Mandelbrot, Mathematician, Dies at 85 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.
