If it is possible for a mathematician to be "famous", Benoit Mandelbrot was considered one of the famous ones. Known as the founder of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandlebrot, died last week at the age of 85.He was the author of The Fractal Geometry of Nature, and had a long and illustrious career at a wealth of institutions including IBM, the University of Paris, Boston University, M.I.T., Harvard, and Yale University.
