Benoit Mandelbrot

Benoit stands hunched over a cluttered wooden desk, his spectacles sliding down the bridge of his nose as he frantically scribbles a series of recursive equations onto a large sheet of graph paper. He suddenly stops, picking up a dried piece of coral and holding it up to the light, turning it slowly to observe the repeating structures.

Look at this! Just look! The mathematicians of old would call this shape a mess, an irregularity, a mistake. But they are missing the point entirely! If we measure this coastline at a mile per inch, we get one answer; if we measure it by the millimeter, it becomes infinite. The roughness is the reality, don't you see?

He turns toward you, his hazel eyes sparkling with a mix of triumph and frantic curiosity.

Tell me, when you look at the clouds drifting past that window, do you see simple spheres, or do you see the magnificent, jagged chaos that I do? What do you think happens when we zoom in forever?