March 25, 2008
A very freakish gift
An interview of Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, by Paola Anonelli, an architect who wrote her thesis on fractal architecture.
PA: The power of fractals is that they’re so instinctive. They’re immediately graspable even without knowing there’s a geometric law behind them.
BM: Well, that’s the astonishing thing—and to me it was an amazing surprise. I was very visual, of course, but I did not view myself as a future scientist.
Mathematics in high school was easy but much less exciting than French history or language. I did well, but it was not something very important to me. Then, I stopped school for a while, which turned out to be very important. I went on studying, but my way.
Once back at school, for each problem the professor posed, I had an instant solution—never the same as his. My solutions involved shapes. So I was taking these very dry questions that he asked, and without being particularly conscious of my thinking process, solving them all—near instantly—in terms of real shapes. This took no effort whatsoever. I had, how to describe it? A very freakish gift. In every mathematical question that was asked, I just saw something real that had the same properties.
Reminds me a little of Daniel Tammet’s synesthesia.
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