Sat 16 Oct 2010
Benoit Mandelbrot has died. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/us/17mandelbrot.html?hp
Now, please comment on the title of my post: did Mandelbrot invent or discover the thing he named ‘fractal’ ?
Math and Computer Science
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I don’ think Mandelbrot “invented” fractals, but he might be the one who coined the term. Fractals were known long before him. Weierstrass gave an example of a continuous function that had no derivative in any point. Nowaday it would be called a fractal.
I think my mistake was more than just giving credit to Mandelbrot over Weierstrass or others. The word ‘invent’ was wrong. In this spirit, I do think that Turing invented was are now called Turing Machines, though it was a way to categorize computability….
Comments?