As a young software engineer focusing on interactive graphics, I had the office next to Vaughan Pratt. I knew him only by the name plate and this beautiful screensaver that’s always on. I would looked at it for minutes and got lost in the beauty of the picture and the way it grew as if alive. One day, Vaughan was in his office, so I asked. “It was a toy,” he said. “An clever way to render the Mandelbrot set.” He just gave me the source code nonchalantly. I felt if someone bestowed me a treasure. And it humbled me that there are things that can be so much out of my league. I did not even know what was Mandelbrot set.
The father of fratals, Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot, died of pancreatic cancer on Oct. 14, AFP reported. He was 85 years old.
Each point of the picture is a world. If you zoom in, the world reveals itself. If you pick a different point and zoom again, there will be another world. The closer you inspect, the more complex the world, or the picture, becomes. Many programmers have rendered many of those worlds. They are all beautiful. They are deeply mathematical, yet visually artistic.
Yes, there are infinite number of worlds, each one infinitively complex, expandable, and all beautiful. All of them exist in a simple formula. Anyone can explore them as long as their computer can handle high-precision calculations.
Thank you, Dr. Mandelbrot, for introducing those worlds to us.
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