Fractals

Fractals are patterns that look the same on differnet

levels of magnification. Here, for example, is the Mandelbrot set:

And zoomed in:

Benoit Mandelbrot

Benoit Mandelbrot

Born in Poland of a Lithuainian Jewish Family, Mandelbrot spent most of his life in France. He has worked at many renowned academic institutions, including THe INstitute For Advandeced STudies at Princeton, The IBM Watson Research Center, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Not only did he coin the term "fractal," but he invented it's most famous example, the Mandelbrot set (Look up).

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a great contributor to fractals. In fact, he came up with the idea.

Born in France, he taught himself Latin and had a very complete education, including a university (his father's- entered at 14, finished at 20). This was very rare for the time. He lived from 1646 to 1716.

His main contribution to the study of Fractals was as follows.

He invented the idea of self-similartiy, one of the very definitions of a fractal. His only mistake was in believing that the straight line was the only example of such.