My farewell essay about Benoit Mandelbrot
appears this weekend in the Times Magazine’s year-end issue, The Lives They Lived. It’s here: “Fractal Vision.”
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The Information
A History, a Theory, a Flood
“It is one of those very rare books that provide a completely new framework for understanding the world around us. It was a privilege to read.”
Royal Society Winton Prize“So ambitious, illuminating and sexily theoretical that it will amount to aspirational reading for many of those who have the mettle to tackle it.”
New York Times
“Bold and arresting”
2012 Hessell-Tiltman Prize
More reviews
Dear James Gleick:
I just read your article about Benoit. I did not know he had died and do feel saddened by his passing.
Your article is excellent.
I met Benoit at IBM, Yorktown in 1983. Richard Voss, a physicist at IBM was working with Benoit, writing software for fractals. Besides helping Benoit make selections of images for his book on Fractals, my husband Jack, a Pediatrician who also died at 85 of Pancreatic Cancer, and I became friends of Benoit and his wife Aliette. Unfortunately, our communication lessened after I completed a two-year period at IBM and returned to Bell Labs in MH. However, I did arrange a lunch at our house in NJ with Benoit, Aliette and Bela Julesz and Margit. Benoit and Bela knew of each other but had never met. It was a wonderful afternoon watching and listening to these two giants interact.
I am a n admirer of your writing and look forward to rereading your “Chaos” on my Kindle.
Thank you for capturing the amazing Benoit I knew.
Best wishes to you and yours for a Healthy and Happy New Year.
Lillian Schwartz
Hi James,
Good old Mandelbrot! Today I happened to learn a way to make our old CHAOS program run (maybe) on all platforms: Linux, Windows 7, and Mac. Check out my blog post about it, with a download page link at
http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2011/01/24/the-classic-chaos-software-goes-multiplatform/\
As ever,
Rudy