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 ...

Fifty years ago, “fractal” was born. In a 1975 book, the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot coined the term to describe a family of rough, fragmented shapes that fall outside ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously once wrote, "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." My mind, and assuredly those of countless others, never did after ...

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 ...

A group of fractal image makers claim to have made the best three-dimensional portrayal to date of the Mandelbrot set, one of the best-known fractal equations. Yet the path there was not ...

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 ...

Drawn from the irregular shapes and processes found in nature, his research benefited a wide array of fields, from art to physics and finance. Steven Musil is a senior news editor at CNET News. He's ...

In 1975, a new word came into use, when a maverick mathematician made an important discovery. So what are fractals? And why are they important? During the 1980s, people became familiar with fractals ...

ONLY rarely does the dry theorising of mathematicians strike a chord with the public. Most people have heard of Einstein and his famous equation, E=mc 2, or of Isaac Newton and his apochryphal falling ...