Benoit B. Mandelbrot is a mathematician who conceived, developed, and named the field of fractal geometry. This field describes the everyday forms of nature--such as mountains, clouds, and the path traveled by lightning--that do not fit into the world of straight lines, circles, and smooth curves known as Euclidean geometry. Mandelbrot was also the first to recognize fractal geometry's value as a tool for analyzing a variety of physical, social, and biological phenomena.

Mandelbrot was born November 20, 1924, to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. His father, the descendant of a long line of scholars, was a manufacturer and wholesaler of children's clothing. His mother, trained as a doctor and dentist, feared exposing her children to epidemics, so instead of sending her son to school, she arranged for him to be tutored at home by his Uncle Loterman. Mandelbrot and his uncle played chess and read maps; he...