Fractals have become a common sight, thanks to computer imagery In 1975, a new word came into use, when a maverick mathematician made an important discovery. So what are fractals? And why are they ...

Fifty years ago, “fractal” was born. In a 1975 book, the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot coined the term to describe a family of rough, fragmented shapes that fall outside ...

Q: You've said, "My whole career is an ardent pursuit of the concept of roughness." What exactly do you mean by that? Benoit Mandelbrot: Actually, this word roughness has different meanings according ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously once wrote, "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." My mind, and assuredly those of countless others, never did after ...

Benoit Mandelbrot , one of the world's most celebrated mathematicians, believes that our understanding of the stock market is as flawed as medieval astronomy. But the 77-year-old mathematician thinks ...

Drawn from the irregular shapes and processes found in nature, his research benefited a wide array of fields, from art to physics and finance. Steven Musil is a senior news editor at CNET News. He's ...

A group of fractal image makers claim to have made the best three-dimensional portrayal to date of the Mandelbrot set, one of the best-known fractal equations. Yet the path there was not ...

In 1975, a new word came into use, when a maverick mathematician made an important discovery. So what are fractals? And why are they important? During the 1980s, people became familiar with fractals ...

Benoit Mandelbrot, the Polish-born, French and American mathematician, known as the "father of fractal geometry," is celebrated in today's Google Doodle, on what would have been his 96th birthday.