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Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85
Beetle B. writes "Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!"
to the Hausdorf Dimension!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I didn't know he was still alive. So much for assumptions.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
You can use your browser to zoom into it infinitely revealing more patterns.
RIP Benoit.
A true genius no longer of this world.
His work has been inspiration to
liqbase
Fractint? Back in the early 80s we had to write our own software to draw fractals on our shitty 8 color displays and we had to wait for the results the following morning.
Now get off my lawn.
His presentation.
I was in year nine (mid-high-school) in country Australia, when my grandmother gave me a subscription to Scientific American; on the front of one of the first issues was a Mandelbrot set. I put the pseudocode into Atari Basic on my trusty 800XL (1.86kHz), and it produced a 40x40 graph of the set in just on 6 hours. It's been one of my standard learn-a-new-language exercises ever since, and the single thing I love the most about mathematics.
but the first thing I thought was, "damn, that one Jonathan Coulton song is going to be really confusing whenever he performs it now." Seriously, though, it's sad that he's dead but I'm happy to reflect that he had the kind of full, accomplished life for which we all hope.
Is there anything better than Fractint now? I too played with it for ages on a clunky old IBM PC with clicky keyboard and Windows 2 (although Fractint ran in DOS though, I think, and necessitated misc tweaking with graphics drivers to make it work, you kids don't know how lucky you are...)
...at least he is now that he's dead. Right now he's no-longer alive and teaching math at Yale. Thanks for all those bad-ass fucking fractals! http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2007/09/02/mandelbrot-set-video-2/
Poor guy. Those of us with our $150 or $300 Commodores and Ataris ran the fractals in gorgeous 16 or 128 colors. Perfect example of how cheaper products can be better than those $100 PCs or $3000 Apples.
I got bored with fractals quickly. The odd shapes they generated were pretty, but I found the graphix demos generated by pirate groups to be far more interesting.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Benoit Mandelbrot practically invented a new field of mathematics that we now use for everything from measuring the size of forests to identifying cancer in its early stages. He was the best of mathematicians.
Eight months ago he gave a ted talk describing his work. If you want to explore fractals for yourself, I recommend GNU XaoS for all platforms.
Correction:
>>>$1,000 PCs
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The keep splitting themselves into even fractionally dimensioned smaller pieces
how long until
I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while watching one of Clarke documentaries, Fractals: the colours of infinity - very nicely done; very inspiring(*), as was the performance (despite its shortness) of Benoit Mandelbrot himself.
Now both gone :/
(*)perhaps too inspiring - I still wait for something like that fractal compression of parrot picture.
One that hath name thou can not otter
if you look closer, you'll realize that he didn't die, it's just he became too big for us to see.
You can't handle the truth.
In school we had to plot Mandelbrots. Now Mandelbrot has a plot of his own.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/10/16/1446231/Benoit-Mandelbrot-Dies-At-85?from=rss
rss takes another victim...
I think those pictures he came up with first inspired an entire generation of would-be computer scientists, maths geeks, physicists and Scientific American readers. How such a simple iteration could render those fascinating patterns even on a 2d grid, remains to this day one of the big mysteries. R.I.P. Benoit, I hope you'll finally be able to make sense of the fractal nature of things from up / down there!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
I met the guy personally at least 4 times in the last 5 years. He was great to get along with and not aloof at all for all his successes.
I'm currently following up on is work in finance (stable distributions).
May he RIP, and may his family consider him resting.
I remember the Scientific American with the Mandelbrot set on the cover - it was a huge influence on my life. I was working as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board in DC and was losing interest in mathematical modeling as a way to understand anything in the real world. Most of the models I was dealing with were linear or mostly linear. When I read the article at first I thought it was some cheap trick or approximation... but gradually I realized it was different than anything I had seen before. So - being a rational, optimizing actor I then left the field of economics .. the most utility-maximizing decision I ever made :-)
Since then I've always viewed fractals as a gateway drug to more complex models of the universe. So many processes unfold over time; fractals are just one of the ways to get a glimpse of what might be going on.
Thanks Dr. Mandelbrot!
He gave us order out of chaos; he gave us hope where there was none. And his geometry succeeds where others fail. Mandelbrot's in heaven.
... that was not merely limited to single or even double precision?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Defying the notion that mathematicians are over the hill at age 30, Mandelbrot made his fractal breakthroughs when he was in his 50s. It gives the rest of us some hope. :)
I spent many hours exploring fractals with that software. Though I had a little better graphics (EGA). Fond memories.
I, too, used Fract386, which became Fractint....I worked at a computer store in Toronto, and we used to sell so many NEC Multi-Sync monitors with ATI's VGA Wonder card based upon showing Fractint on it!
Through someone on I met on LJ, I was able to get a "autographed mandelbrot", basically a color print out of part of the Mandelbrot set, autographed by the now, late, great Benoit Mandelbrot. Although I never got to meet him, he discovery has given much beauty to my life.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Fractals were how this non-artist got his art credit in high school with style. :)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Upon receiving sad tidings, a Jew recites the blessing "Blessed is the True Judge" The Omnipresent should comfort the Mandelbrot family in the Gate of Zion's Mourners in Jerusalem.
could it be?
To commemorate this, we should all re-watch Colors of Infinity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB8m85p7GsU
Many of the people who have discovered things great and small that astonish and delight are still living. It's not too late to look them up on the internet and personally thank them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
My feelings at his passing are both too real and too complex to explain in plane terms.
Yeah, but when you've seen one part of the Mandelbrot set, you've seen it all.
.. and thanks for all the fractals.
The boundaries of his life were filled with many twists and turns.
Zooming into a Mandelbox, with weird music: http://vimeo.com/13886600
... back in uni - gwbasic I think - was a Mandelbrot set renderer. We were just starting with Mathematical Analysis and the first real struggles with imaginary numbers, sequences, series and limits. I guess messing around with it cost me an exam session, but it was way much more fun than rote theorems (later Profs were good, not that first class though ;( )
RIP
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
A few years ago it was popular to make CG images of starships with a procedural/fractal nebula in the background. I used to make comments like: "The Enterprise is investigating the Mandelbrot Nebula", but nobody I know of ever got it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
At least for me... I first read something about him, in my freshman year in college, in the book Caos, by James Gleick http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140092501/jamesgleick. To this day I remember him with the utmost consideration. I hope he had a happy life. I'll never forget his work... He was one of the great scientists of our time.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
I heard Mandelbrot talk at IBM a few years ago. He was concerned about the increase in volatility of the financial markets - this was before 2008 - and I wonder what his last thoughts were on the subject of economics.
... now back to the bit mines.
He was a great man in every sense of the word. Despite his enormous accomplishments and being a historical figure, he still took time to address his emails personally and answered every reasonable request. I was his assistant of sorts during a period in Cambridge, MA, and one time he got this request from a person asking him to write to his HS math teacher because this teacher had inspired him to go into math. Well Prof Mandelbrot wrote him a beautiful letter that still chokes me up when I remember it. After he dictated it to me, I told him that at that moment and from then on, that I would be glad to take a bullet for him. He chuckled, thanked me in a very modest tone and proceeded to the next topic. He was always polite and pleasant and full of energy. May he rest in peace.
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/benoit_mandelbrot_fractals_the_art_of_roughness.html
he thought, "and I can't take it with me."
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Glad to see someone else mention this. Everyone knows about his work on fractal geometry, but few people realize that since the 1950s he was interested in the financial markets as well, being one of the first to apply computer technologies to market data. I highly recommend his very readable book, "The (Mis)Behavior of Markets".
A sad day for me and for others who admired his inveterate quirkiness and his uncanny ability to "think outside the box." I never met Dr. Mandelbrot, but we had about a dozen phone conversations over the past 15 years. He liked my research and appreciated that his work on cotton prices inspired me to challenge conventional wisdom in my field of real estate. In our last conversation, after mentioning that I was updating some old work, I asked him whether to employ newer technology or simply to extend the earlier work with the same technology used back in 1995. As was often the case, he related a story. This time it concerned a mentor whom he described as a genius and aviation pioneer who received little recognition for his work. Why? Well, it seemed that this man never was satisfied with his aircraft designs, always knowing that he could do something better. As a consequence of his endless quest for perfection, the man never saw his airplane fly. Dr. Mandelbrot's advice to me was "Just get the plane to fly. Then, others will know what can be refined." I will miss his sage counsel.
And in case you haven't noticed, the title here is a paraphrase of a title of a chapter of a story (or film) of another Great that, too, is no longer with us. Let's see if you recognize it.
It is sad that brilliant minds die. But it happens. And may you fall into an infinite trench of Fractal wonders.
Mandelbrot has inspired many, and has inspired me to create Gravity Set Fractals.
http://www.fredmitchell.net/fractals/index.html
Long Live Self-Similarity!!!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
http://thinkorthwim.com/2010/02/12/mathematical-porn
if you take the time to watch till the end, its worth your while....
A manderbrot set renderer I happened to write a few years ago in dc(1):
[lolssdsl0lqx]sx[1+lddd*lld*-ls+dsdrll2**lo+dsld*rd*+4<kd15>q]sq[q
]9ksk[d77/3*2-ss47lxx-P1+d78>0]s00[d23/.5-3*so0l0xr10P1+d24>u]dsux
The output of the program in case you don't feel like running it yourself.
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
bite my glorious golden ass.
I don't think you can fully appreciate the deep beauty of the Mandelbrot set until you've coded your own program to render it. Sure, once you've done it, use someone else's implementation -- it's sure to be faster, more flexible and have a nicer UI. But writing your own makes you understand the underlying maths.
I wrote mine in Basic on a BBC Micro. I'd leave it overnight to render a full screen 320x256, 4bpp.
Now it's a piece of cake in Processing or Processing.js, and renders pretty much instantly:
http://processingjs.org/learning/topic/mandelbrot
If you've not written a Mandelbrot renderer, I'd suggest either starting blind, or studying the example above, then rewriting it without looking at the original.
I still vividly remember feverishly watching the first coarse outline of a Mandelbrot set becoming visible after a night of coding Turbo Pascal (as navigator - even though we didn't know that term, let alone paradigm, back then) and many awe filled hours on Xaos later on.
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