November 20th is the birthdate of the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who was a Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University in the US, and is famous for first introducing the term Fractal into Mathematics. Fractal geometry is a branch of mathematics developed in the late 1970’s and 1980’s based on shapes being self-similar at different levels of magnification. The iconic Mandelbrot Set is an example of this. Self-similarity means that no matter how much you zoom into view a shape the same pattern re-appears so that it is virtually impossible to know at which level you are looking.
