Mandelbrot,+Benoit

Benoit Mandelbrot was born on November 20, 1924 in Warsaw, Poland. His family was Jewish and originally came from Lithuania. The Mandelbrot family moved to France from Poland when he was a child to reduce the risk of Nazis finding them and sending them to a concentration camp. Benoit was introduced to mathematics as a young child by his two uncles, who were also mathematicians. Later, he studied at many institutions such as Yale, International Business Machines (IBM), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In 1955 he married Ailette Kagan and moved to Switzerland and then to Lille, France. He was the Professor of the Practice of Mathematics at Harvard University, as well as Professor of Economics. He also held appointments as Professor of Engineering at Yale, Professor of Mathematics at a French school, and Professor of Physiology at the Einstein College of Medicine. Mandelbrot has also received many honors and prizes for his studies such as the Barnard Medal for Meritorious Service to Science, the Franklin Medal, the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, and the Japan Prize for Science and Technology. He has and now continues to study fractal, which are used to describe the shape of objects that do not have simple geometric shapes like clouds, mountains, and coastlines.