Benoit Mandelbrot, who 'discovered' Fractals, died on October 17, 2010. What fractals are is easier to describe by explaining that they are apparently random mathematical shapes which, however follow a pattern, repeating until the molecular level.

For example, if you look at a tree; there is the trunk, from the trunk come limbs. If you look at the limb of a tree, it is just like the trunk, and from the limbs grow branches. If you look at the branches you see, growing from them, in the same pattern that the limbs grow from the trunk and the branches from the limb, are twigs.

This pattern can be reduced to a mathematical formula which can measure previously immeasurable objects, including the coastline of the British Isles, the geometry of a lung or a cauliflower.



