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Benoit Mandelbrot 1924-2010

  • 16-10-2010 3:22pm
    #1
    bnt
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 13,073 ✭✭✭✭


    The NY Times has a short obituary here. :(

    You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

    ―Oscar Wilde predicting Social Media, in The Picture of Dorian Gray



Comments

  • #2
    FoxT
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,204 ✭✭✭FoxT


    I am surprised you've had no responses here. I recall that there was a lot of popular interest in the Mandelbrot Set at one stage, in the 80s. I remember programming an AMSTRAD to plot selections of it. Each 640x480 plot could take, a few minutes to do.

    I also got a present of his book ' The fractal geometry of nature' which was interesting but I found it almost unreadable due to his arrogant style of writing. I still look at the pictures sometimes though...



    - FoxT


  • #3
    Enkidu
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,005 ✭✭✭Enkidu


    Like most other mathematicians I must admit I never really understood why Mandelbrot always appeared in popular publications when several other "greater" mathematicians are never mentioned to the public, e.g. Saunders MacLane and Alexander Grothendieck.

    An excellent explanation of the importance of Mandelbrot's work for skeptical mathematicians can be found in this article by Tom Leinster: Mandelbrot

    Helped me change my conceptions of his work anyway.


  • #4
    FoxT
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,204 ✭✭✭FoxT


    I am not a mathematician myself, and I am afraid the article you linked to was a bit beyond me. It got me thinking though, about why Mandelbrot became so well known.

    It seems to me that over the years Mandelbrot became a household name partly because of the advent of home computers (& people like me who wanted to program them), and partly because he seems to have been quite a good self-publicist.
    Mathematics has become a specialised area of study & it is rare for lay people to get a glimpse into an area that is both modern, and accessible. . The Mandelbrot set fitted the bill perfectly here, especially as home PCs were available so people could easily experiment & explore it.

    I expect the set itself is by no means pivotal in the history of mathematics, and I don't doubt that there are/were mathematicians out there who are more highly regarded by their peers, even if not well known to the general public.
    Nevertheless, from a layman's point of view I think he played a part in stimulating public interest in mathematics, which was a good thing..

    - FoxT


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