-
Benoit Mandelbrot's Birth
in Warsaw, Poland -
Benoit and his family flee to France to escape the Nazis
*Exact date unknown Benoit later goes to the countryside to avoid the Nazis again. -
Took entrance exams to École Polytechnique and passed without the standard 2 years of preparation
-
Earned diploma at École Polytechnique in France
*Exact date unknown -
Earned M.S.at California Institute of Technology
*Exact date unknown -
Period: to
Worked as a mathematician for Phillips Electronics in Paris
*Exact dates unknown -
Earned Ph.D. at University of Paris
*Exact date unknown -
Period: to
Taught as junior professor of mathematics
at the University of Geneva in Switzerland -
Period: to
Worked at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
in New York -
Period: to
Studied records of the Nile River, replacing the existing flood prediction model
(In the 60s) -
Published "How Long is the Coast of Britain?"
Introduced his ideas of infinite complexity--and the idea of an infinitely long coastline if you looked close enough. -
Wrote a fractal-generation algorithm while working for IBM which could generate images that looked similar to real landforms.
-
Period: to
IBM Fellow
*Exact dates unknown
The highest level award a researcher at IBM can be awarded. http://www.research.ibm.com/resources/awards_fellows.shtml -
Published Les Objets fractals: forme, hasard et dimension
*Date unknown This began his career as a mathematician. While others had published information about fractals, Mandelbrot was the first to publish information about their geometry. -
Published The Fractal Geometry of Nature
*Date unknown This book expanded upon Mandelbrot's original work on fractals, demonstrating their presence throughout nature. -
Period: to
Teaches math at Yale as an assistant professor
-
Period: to
Member of IBM Academy of Technology
*Dates unknown -
Won the Wolf Prize for physics for his discovery of fractal occurance in nature and the application of math to describe nature.
*Date not known -
Period: to
Teaches math at Yale as a full time professor
-
Won Japan Prize for Science and Technology from the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan
*Exact date unknown -
Benoit Mandelbrot dies of pancreatic cancer
at the age of 85.