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HE WAS shaped by war, migration and poverty 鈥� though these travails only made the late French-American mathematician stronger. Throughout his life, the man who discovered the mathematics behind fractal geometry insisted on bucking trends, maintaining a fierce individuality. He was nothing short of a maverick.

鈥淭he man who discovered the maths behind fractals bucked trends and kept his fierce individuality鈥�

The Fractalist, Mandelbrot鈥檚 account of his own life, begins with details of his forebears and ends with a photo of him in his 80s surrounded by grandchildren. But he often departs from the linear chronology, spiralling out into seemingly misplaced vignettes. This disjointed (you could almost say fractal) narrative doesn鈥檛 undermine the impact of the memoir. Mandelbrot draws surprising links between his lifelong academic and political sparring and his unique visual sensibilities to paint a picture of how he came to see the world in an entirely new way, from his first musings on word frequencies to postulations of a theory of what makes surfaces rough.

鈥淔ractal geometry鈥� first invites disbelief but鈥� becomes so natural that one wonders why it has only recently been developed,鈥� he wrote. Perhaps it was simply a matter of waiting for someone with the courage and vision to see reality differently. Mandelbrot鈥檚 truly inspiring story explains just how such a person came to be.