Biography

Benoît B. Mandelbrot

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American mathematician and scientist who was born in Poland. He is a leader in the development of fractal theory and in the potential application of fractals to nature and design. Dr. Mandelbrot discovered the Mandelbrot Set on 1 March 1980 while working as an IBM Fellow at the Watson Research Center. Received his first PhD in Paris 1952: "Docteur d'Etat". Has held numerous professorial appointments at many different universities over time.
- IMDb mini biography by: Sid Dithers <sid@dithers.com>

A mathematician, considered a maverick, Mandelbrot developed the concept of 'fractal geometry' in the 1970s & 80s.
He is survived by his wife, Aliette Mandelbrot of Cambridge, Massachusetts; two sons, Laurent Mandelbrot of Paris, France, and Didier Mandelbrot of Newton, Massachusetts; and three grandchildren.
He was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1987, he taught at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and earned tenure in 1999. He was awarded more than 15 honorary doctorates and served on several scientific journals and the Mandelbrot Foundation for Fractuals.
Before 1958 when he was hired by I.B.M., he was at the Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique in Paris, France. In 1958, he came to work at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
After World War II, he studied at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He earned a Master's degree from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He returned to Paris, France where he earned his Doctorate in mathematics in 1952. He went for a post-doctoral degree at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey under mathematician, John Von Neumann.

[on his career] If you take the beginning and the end, I have had a conventional career. But it was not a straight line between the beginning and the end. It was a very crooked line.

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