Benoît B. Mandelbrot is famous for having come up with an entirely new way of looking at mathematics called fractal geometry. This has enabled math to be useful in all sorts of investigations into natural phenomena which in the past could not happen.
I am competent with math. I am not the slightest bit intimidated by it, and I can use math and statistics to do all sorts of useful things. But to me math is simply a tool which one uses to solve a particular problem.
To see math visually and to deeply feel that a particular type of math is “beautiful” requires a certain type of brilliance which I do not have. I am more of a Mr. Fix-It, nose to the grindstone type. My brother Michael Dwight Garland had the kind of mind which could see the beauty in math.
When Mandelbrot first went public with his ideas about fractal geometry Mike immediately saw the brilliance and accepted this type of mathematics as very useful and beautiful. He turned me on to the Mandelbrot set, which I enjoyed, but I was not able to truly understand it.
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