Frectally speaking

Having just recently shared some thoughts online about complexity and the importance of patterns, I have to mark the passing of Benoit Mandelbrot, known as the “father of fractals“..

You will have seen fractal patterns in many places, in nature, in art, on your PC and not necessarily known their name.

You may not have known that a French mathematician names Benoit Mandelbrot had formulated the term fractal and the related science known as fractal geometry, which though mathematical in focus has links from cauliflowers to coastlines to economics..

You might be interested in some beautiful images of fractals alongside some of his story here at TIME.

For more information on Mandelbrot’s life (1924-2010) and work, the Economist has an obituary while the updated wikipedia entry on Mandelbrot provides a nice summary.

If you haven’t heard of it before his famous  paper on “How Long is the Coast of Britain” is also available..