The Fractal Geometry of Nature

By Benoît B. Mandelbrot

Book Overview

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, and lightening does not travel in a straight line. The complexity of nature's shapes differs in kind, not merely degree, from that of the shapes of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0716711869
• ISBN13: 9780910321648
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman & Co.
• Length: 460 Pages
• Weight: 2.33 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A great insight into the world of fractals

This is a great book for someone looking to discover what all the hullabaloo is about fractals. It provides a wonderful insight into the mind of one of the great mathematical geniuses of our time, Benoit Mandelbrot. I think some people will find his writing style a bit too stodgy, almost arithmetical, but I find it interesting. I especially appreciate how marks off when he's going to be tangential with special brackets. Mandelbrot doesn't delve into too many rigorous mathematical proofs of the various topics he discusses. He broaches each subject in such a way that should be accessible to people from a wide array of sciences and disciplines. I don't recommend this book if you're trying to figure out how to create simple fractal programs. But I enthusiastically recommend it if you want to learn more about fractals, discover a new way to think about and understand nature, or are simply looking for a good bit of erudition.

One of the greatest books

Not bought for me, but for another. She raves about it, and says it is even more enjoyable than she could have hoped.

The premiere primer on the subject of fractal geometry.

This tome is the immortal classic that introduces fractals to the layman and scholar alike. The mechanics and beauty of fractals are presented in a very readable manner that is sure to pique the interest of anyone seeking a deterministic, yet almost supernaturally pervasive paradigm of the structure of the universe. This book fundamentally affected my personal outlook on nature irrecovably. I would advise leaving it on the coffee table for your children to examine.

This book started it all

This book is by far the very root by which chaos and the interrelations with that of nature came into existance. Mandelbrot describes chaos and dynamical systems as applied in the real world, and how fractals do appear in nature. Mandelbrot gets an A+.