Benoit Mandelbrot

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Benoit Mandelbrot is one of the most celebrated mathematicians of the 20th Century. At the age of 14/15, Mandelbrot found himself as a Jew in Nazi-occupied France, marked for death. A French Resistance leader, David Feuerwerker, made provisions to keep him alive and hide him, but The Battle of Britain was raging. Supposedly, although Wikipedia will not confirm this outright, The Battle of Britain inspired him to begin trying to solve one of the most lingering applied math problems of all time: How long is the coast of Britain?

He would eventually solve this question by answering that the length was technically infinite, and revolutionize mathematical thinking and formalize the study of Fractals doing so. Fractals have been really important in the development of modern computer hardware and semiconductors among other things. It’s a strange story.

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Thanks for sharing.

May I ask how you stumbled upon it?

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I learned about Mandelbrot and Fractals in High School because I’ve always been interested in Math, but a Math professor of mine from years ago, possibly Gieri Simonett although I don’t remember who, told me the account.

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Sounds like an awesome bunch of math profs! Thank you. Will save the pdf for my commute later.

I heared the story in a similar way (that some guy was trying to figure out the length of a coast line) but didn’t know the details. So again thanks for that.

Only thing that got stuck with me: The coast line of Norway is longer than the coast line of China.

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