To listen to more of Benoît Mandelbrot’s stories, go to the playlist: • Benoît Mandelbrot - Fa...
The late French-American mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot (1924-2010) discovered his ability to think about mathematics in images while working with the French Resistance, and is famous for his work on fractal geometry, the maths of the shapes found in nature. [Listeners: Bernard Sapoval and Daniel Zajdenweber; date recorded:1998]
TRANSCRIPT:Actually, the IBM fellowship did not change my life so brutally, but I received the privileges of an IBM fellow before I received the title. However I would like to say a few words about that. It's a very good point. I mentioned how IBM research started in rather inauspicious circumstances in terms of IBM being the last big boy when everybody was busy elsewhere. IBM very soon realised the problems that its very size, gigantic size, had on the way research was being carried on. In particular the innovation was introduced that some people, a few people every year, were chosen to become IBM fellows. The word was deliberately very bland, it has many other meanings, but in that instance it meant that those people who became IBM fellows were given for five years, completely, and then for indefinite time periods as time went on, the privilege of doing basically what they wanted.
27 июл 2024
