Death of the fractal king

I missed much of the news the last few days, so I did not realise till today that we have lost a great mathematician, Benoît Mandelbrot, who is best known for his works in fractals and in particular, the Mandelbrot set. He died in hospice on the 14th of October of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 85.

I confess that what I know of fractals and of Mandlebrot is not from my study of mathematics, but from researching for a game of Call of Cthulhu, where fractals figured prominently and Mandelbrot was featured as well. I have to admit, I am just not good enough at math to fully grasp the concept of fractals. But I can appreciate enough to realise he was brilliant, and we have lost a genius.

Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw. His family, who were Jewish, fled to France and he lived under the cloud of Nazism for much of his youth. Fortunately he survived and went on to become a great mathematician.