'Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.” With these words pioneering man of ideas Benoît ...

The Mandelbrot set, according to Wikipedia, is “the set of complex numbers for which the function does not diverge.” Even if you don’t understand the mathematics behind it, you’ve likely seen the ...

Benoit Mandelbrot , one of the world's most celebrated mathematicians, believes that our understanding of the stock market is as flawed as medieval astronomy. But the 77-year-old mathematician thinks ...

Q: You've said, "My whole career is an ardent pursuit of the concept of roughness." What exactly do you mean by that? Benoit Mandelbrot: Actually, this word roughness has different meanings according ...

Now, more often than not, old-timers introduce mandelbrot to the uninitiated as Jewish biscotti. Which is partly why Larry Finkelstein, who bakes a lot of the excellent treats at Court Street Grocers, ...

The Mandelbrot set is — when visualized with some colors — an interesting shape with infinite detail. While the patterns are immediately obvious to the human eye, anyone who’s run one can tell you ...

To keep communications secure in a post-quantum world, cryptographers are digging down into the concept of cause and effect. Matt von Hippel All the Fancy Measuring Devices Used in Science Rely on Two ...

Fractals have become a common sight, thanks to computer imagery In 1975, a new word came into use, when a maverick mathematician made an important discovery. So what are fractals? And why are they ...

Benoît Mandelbrot, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 85, enjoyed the rare distinction of having his name applied to a feature of mathematics that has become part of everyday life – the Mandelbrot ...

A gallery of images spawned by the theories of the innovative mathematician, who died Oct. 14 at the age of 85 The Mandelbrot set, which is most commonly represented by the above illustration, ...

Benoit Mandelbrot, who died on October 14 aged 85, was largely responsible for developing the discipline of fractal geometry – the study of rough or fragmented geometric shapes or processes that have ...

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, a maverick mathematician who developed the field of fractal geometry and applied it to physics, biology, finance and many other fields, died on Thursday in Cambridge, Mass. He ...