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If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.

Benoit Mandelbrot

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Benoit Mandelbrot
Age: 85 †
Born: 1924
Born: November 20
Died: 2010
Died: October 14
Computer Scientist
Economist
Engineer
Mathematician
Professor
Scientist
Writer
Warszawa
Mandelbrot
B. B.‏
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Takes
Solve
Problem
Kinds
Reawaken
Able
Fields
Colossal
Kind
Took
Rewarded
Taking
Substantial
Problems
Contribute
Fashion
Risks
Risk
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More quotes by Benoit Mandelbrot

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A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.
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One couldn't even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn't expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
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Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I spent my time very nicely in many ways, but not fully satisfactory. Then I became Professor in France, but realized that I was not - for the job that I should spend my life in.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Regular geometry, the geometry of Euclid, is concerned with shapes which are smooth, except perhaps for corners and lines, special lines which are singularities, but some shapes in nature are so complicated that they are equally complicated at the big scale and come closer and closer and they don't become any less complicated.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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It was astonishing when at one point, I got the idea of how to make artifical clouds with a collaborator, we had pictures made which were theoretically completely artificial pictures based upon that one very simple idea. And this picture everybody views as being clouds.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Everybody in mathematics had given up for 100 years or 200 years the idea that you could from pictures, from looking at pictures, find new ideas. That was the case long ago in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in later periods, but then mathematicians had become very abstract.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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A fractal is a way of seeing infinity.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The extraordinary fact is that the first idea I had which motivated me, that worked, is conjecture, a mathematical idea which may or may not be true. And that idea is still unproven. It is the foundation, what started me and what everybody failed to **** prove has so far defeated the greatest efforts by experts to be proven.
Benoit Mandelbrot