Mandelbrot, Benoit B. (bənwä` măn`dəlbrō', Fr. mäNdĕlbrô`), 1924–, French mathematician, b. Warsaw, Poland. Largely self-taught and considered a maverick in the field of mathematics, he is uncomfortable with the rigorously pure logical analysis prescribed by Nicolas Bourbaki Bourbaki, Nicolas, pseudonym under which a group of 20th cent. mathematicians has written a series of treatises on pure mathematics. The mathematicians have all been associated with the Ecole Normale Supérieure
..... Click the link for more information. and relies instead on his talent for visualizing natural phenomena. A pioneer of chaos theory chaos theory, in mathematics, physics, and other fields, a set of ideas that attempts to reveal structure in aperiodic, unpredictable dynamic systems such as cloud formation or the fluctuation of biological populations.
..... Click the link for more information. , he conceived, developed, and applied fractal geometry fractal geometry, branch of mathematics concerned with irregular patterns made of parts that are in some way similar to the whole, e.g., twigs and tree branches, a property called self-similarity or self-symmetry.
..... Click the link for more information. , which is used to find order in apparently erratic shapes and processes.

Mandelbrot, Benoit B.

(born Nov. 20, 1924, Warsaw, Pol.) Polish-born U.S. mathematician. He received a doctorate from the University of Paris and emigrated to the U.S. in 1958. He is best known for his work with fractals (a term he coined; see fractal geometry), which, he showed, can occur in many different places in mathematics and in nature. He was influenced by Gaston Maurice Julia (1893–1978), whose work on dynamical systems theory had been forgotten until the 1970s, when Mandelbrot's fundamental computer experiments and use of computer graphics breathed new life into it. The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical set of imaginary numbers generated from a simple equation. It appears infinitely complex when graphed on a computer.