You’ve probably seen the Mandelbrot set before, but you may never have seen how it evolves from one iteration to the…

You’ve probably seen the Mandelbrot set before, but you may never have seen how it evolves from one iteration to the next.

Originally shared by annarita ruberto

Today in Mathematics History: Happy Birthday, Benoit Mandelbrot

Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born, French and American scientist-mathematician. He has been most widely recognized and honored for his discoveries in the field of fractal geometry.

Science writer Arthur C. Clarke credits fractals as being “one of the most astonishing discoveries in the entire history of mathematics”.

Studying complex dynamics in the 1970s, Benoit Mandelbrot had a key insight about a particular set of mathematical objects: that these self-similar structures with infinitely repeating complexities were not just curiosities, as they’d been considered since the turn of the century, but were in fact a key to explaining non-smooth objects and complex data sets — which make up, let’s face it, quite a lot of the world. Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to describe these objects, and set about sharing his insight with the world.

The Mandelbrot set (expressed as z² + c) was named in Mandelbrot’s honor by Adrien Douady and John H. Hubbard. Its boundary can be magnified infinitely and yet remain magnificently complicated, and its elegant shape made it a poster child for the popular understanding of fractals. Led by Mandelbrot’s enthusiastic work, fractal math has brought new insight to the study of pretty much everything, from the behavior of stocks to the distribution of stars in the universe.

► Animation explanation: this beautiful Mandelbrot Set has been developed in R Programming Language.

Read more at source>>

http://www.r-bloggers.com/mandelbrot-set-evolved/

Further reading

► Mandelbrot biography in Mac Tutor archive>>

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Mandelbrot.html

► For Italian speakers a my article about fractal geometry>>

http://www.tutto-scienze.org/2012/11/dai-neuroni-alluniverso-la-geometria.html

#history_of_mathematics #benoit_mandelbrot #fractals