Benoit Mandelbrot - Legacy

Legacy

Lebanese author and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb states that Mandelbrot "had perhaps more cumulative influence than any other single scientist in history, with the only close second, Isaac Newton." Taleb adds, "He was the only teacher I ever had, the only person for whom I have had intellectual respect. But there was something else that made him magnetic: he was a raconteur with a profound sense of historical context . . ." James Gleick, author of the best-selling book, Chaos: Making a New Science, explains further:

Benoit Mandelbrot was the one who let us appreciate chaos in all its glory—the noisy, the wayward, and the freakish, from the very small to the very large. He invented a new and slightly nebulous field of study—a kind of geometry, for want of a better description—and he invented that recondite name for it, fractal.

Chris Anderson, curator of TED conferences, described Mandelbrot as "an icon who changed how we see the world." Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Mandelbrot had "a powerful, original mind that never shied away from innovating and shattering preconceived notions". Sarkozy also added, "His work, developed entirely outside mainstream research, led to modern information theory." Mandelbrot's obituary in The Economist points out his fame as "celebrity beyond the academy" and lauds him as the "father of fractal geometry."