Benoit Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 20, 1924. His family
was Jewish and had originally come from Lithuania. In 1936, the growth of Nazi
power led the Mandelbrot family to move to France. 1944 brought the liberation
of France and the beginning of Mandelbrot's university education by Gaston Julia
and others. Mandelbrot worked at an IBM research center studying chaotic data in
economics. He coined the term "fractal" and received numerous scientific awards
during his lifetime.
The Mandelbrot Set is the set of all Julia sets
combined. This set iterates the equation (z^2+c) with z fixed at 0 and c
varying. The bulk of the Mandelbrot Set is the black cardioid. It's studded with
circles all around its boundary. The Mandelbrot Set is bilaterally symmetrical
but isn't precisely self-similar. This set is described as quasi-self-similar.
Slight differences can be detected between the cardioid and the branches.
Zooming in on the branches of the Mandelbrot Set gives you an example of a Julia
fractal.
