Benoit Mandelbrot was born in Poland on November 20, 1924, but when still a boy of 12, his family emigrated to France. He studied Mathematics and practical sciences first in France and later in the US, obtaining his Master’s degree in aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology.
In 1958, he began his 35-year career at IBM. He was one of the first to use computer graphics to create fractal geometrical images leading to the famous Mandelbrot Set in 1979. He is recognised for his contribution to Fractal Geometry after coining the word fractal. He described himself as a ‘fractalist’ and developed the theory of ‘Roughness and Self-similarity’. Mandelbrot had both French and American citizenship. At the end of his career, he was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University. Left: The Mandelbrot Set created by Wolfgang Beyer. Source: https://commons.wikimedia. org/w/index.php?curid=321973. Right: Benoit Mandelbrot. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benoit_Mandelbrot,_TED_2010.jpg