Since 1978, the Wolf Foundation has been granting $100,000 prizes for individual achievements in agriculture, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics, and the arts. This year, the prizes will be presented by Israeli President Chaim Herzog at the Knesset building in Jerusalem.
Born in Warsaw, Poland, Mandelbrot, 68, is being honored for showing how fractals can have practical applications in many disciplines. He is the author of The Fractal Geometry of Nature (New York, W.H. Freeman & Co., 1982). Fractals--geometric objects of a complex nature composed of simple, invariant geometric patterns--have been found useful to researchers in the diverse fields of astronomy, computer science, biology, economics, geography, and physics.
"I never liked mathematics by itself. I didn't like its dryness or abstraction," Mandelbrot says. "So I spent all my life being a mathematician without being a member of the core mathematics community. I've always done things my own way, which is why ...
