Talk:Benoit Mandelbrot

Traded Clothes?
"His family was Jewish and had a strong academic tradition — his mother was a dental surgeon, and his father made his living trading clothing"

Trading clothing now requires a degree of some kind?

Perhaps the sentence ought to read 'although his father etc.'

As it stands, the sentence lies somewhere between clumsy and comic, almost as though Woody Allen had authored it:

'Mandelbrot's father was a brilliant rocket scientist, though his mother still had to take in washing.' 'Mandelbrot's mother was a mathematician of international repute, while his father mended shoes and danced for throw-money outside movie theatres.' 121.44.223.71 (talk) 21:34, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree completely with the above comment. This sentence is really jarring. I would also note that being Jewish and the family's academic tradition are two different ideas. I propose changing:

"His family was Jewish and had a strong academic tradition — his mother was a dental surgeon, and his father made his living trading clothing."

to:

"His family was Jewish. Although his father made his living trading clothing, the family had a strong academic tradition and his mother was a dental surgeon." Any objections or comments?
 * The suggested phrasing would be a good improvement. --Light show (talk) 18:48, 5 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Of course the unsigned commenter is correct. I've boldly made the change. Carlstak (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Taking this up again a few years later, I have taken out that statement about "strong academic tradition". I don’t see any basis for that in the reference given (The Wolf Prizes, 2002) and nothing is lost without it. So I have rewritten the passage, including a little more detail about his education and one of those two uncles on the by. I’ve left out the entire following sentence – as I don’t think there’s anything noteworthy in a mathematician loving mathematics, and the autobiography is still referenced in other paragraphs – but here it is for your easier consideration: "According to Mandelbrot's autobiography, The Fractalist - Memoir of a Scientific Maverick,[14] "[t]he love of his [Szolem's] mind was mathematics".[8]:16 Geke (talk) 00:10, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Remove picture or correct caption
The picture "File:Newton-lplane-Mandelbrot.jpg" is not part of the Mandelbrot set, as far as I understand it. So why is it in here? I propose to remove it. Even if it’s in some way significant, it certainly shouldn’t be captioned "A Mandelbrot set".--Geke (talk) 00:20, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

G L E?
the google doodle has a rather prominent "G L E" displayed behind him. what is this?

google gives us a choice of "Ginzburg-Landau Equation", which relates to chaos in electrodynamics, and "Generalized Langevin Equation", which has some relation to Gaussian and Lévy distributions. me, i'd prolly cut out the middle man and go direct to "Gaussian-Lévy Equation", tho absolutely nothing googles up with that.

NONE of these are in his wiki, btw, nor does anything signidicant google up using "mandelbrot...g l e"! so what the heck IS it, important enuf to be in his portrait?! 66.30.47.138 (talk) 09:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)


 * aw geesh, it was the G L E in "G O O G L E"!!


 * the time i wasted on this!! >:( 66.30.47.138 (talk) 12:43, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Protect Page?
Should this page be semi-protected, at least while Mandelbrot is the subject of today's (Nov 20, 2020) google doodle? There seems to be a lot of vandalism from IP addresses, including one edit that removed the infobox and the first paragraph of the intro. Paul1764 (talk) 13:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)