Trivia

A mathematician, considered a maverick, Mandelbrot developed the concept of 'fractal geometry' in the 1970s & 80s.

He is survived by his wife, Aliette Mandelbrot of Cambridge, Massachusetts; two sons, Laurent Mandelbrot of Paris, France, and Didier Mandelbrot of Newton, Massachusetts; and three grandchildren.

He was a visiting professor at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology both in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1987, he taught at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and earned tenure in 1999. He was awarded more than 15 honorary doctorates and served on several scientific journals and the Mandelbrot Foundation for Fractuals.

Before 1958 when he was hired by I.B.M., he was at the Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique in Paris, France. In 1958, he came to work at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.

After World War II, he studied at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He earned a Master's degree from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He returned to Paris, France where he earned his Doctorate in mathematics in 1952. He went for a post-doctoral degree at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey under mathematician, John Von Neumann.

He was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents in Warsaw, Poland. In 1936, his family fled the Nazis first to Paris, France and to the South of France where he tended horses and fixed tools.

Added the middle initial "B."; it did not stand for a particular name.

Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (2000).