Benoit Mandelbrot
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Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish-born mathematician who worked in France and America and became famous for discovering the Mandelbrot set, a mathematical object that revealed how simple rules can create infinitely complex patterns. His work on fractals—self-similar shapes that repeat at different scales—transformed how scientists understand natural phenomena ranging from coastlines to financial markets.
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Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature.
In 1936, at the age of 11, Mandelbrot and his family emigrated from Warsaw, Poland, to France. After World War II ended, Mandelbrot studied mathematics, graduating from universities in Paris and in the United States and receiving a master's degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. He spent most of his career in both the United States and France, having dual French and American citizenship. In 1958, he began a 35-year career at IBM, where he became an IBM Fellow, and periodically took leaves of absence to teach at Harvard University. At Harvard, following the publication of his study of U.S. commodity markets in relation to cotton futures, he taught economics and applied sciences.
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1924 births2010 deaths20th-century American economists20th-century American mathematicians20th-century American statisticians20th-century French mathematicians20th-century French statisticians20th-century Polish Jews20th-century Polish mathematicians21st-century American economists21st-century American mathematicians21st-century American statisticians