Benoit Mandelbrot

Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences

Benoit Mandelbrot, Ingeneur diplome, Ecole Polytechnique, Paris; M.S. California Institute of Technology; Docteur d’Etat es Sciences Mathematiques, Paris, adjunct at Yale from 1987-1999 and Sterling Professor from 1999: You are a person who has actually changed the world’s intellectual landscape. Born in Poland, educated in France and the United States, your real home has been that world without boundaries inside your head. Your refusal to be constrained by predetermined ways of thinking about mathematics and science, and your original way of thinking has enabled you to break intellectual categories and contribute to many different branches of science. Of your great discovery—fractal geometry—Peter Clark of the University of St. Andrews was quoted as saying: “your insight and vision saw in those objects and the man-made new ones you discovered (some of which now bear your name) … signposts to a new mathematical universe, a new geometry with as much system and generality as that of Euclid, and a new physical science.”

Summarizing your achievements and honors is not easy. Your list of publications and contributions goes on for pages, and the list of pages about your work takes almost as many. It is tribute enough when a faculty member receives a prestigious award or medal. You have received every medal and award, local, national and international, the world of mathematical sciences can bestow. The Wolf Medal, the Honda Prize, the Medaille de Vermeil, and even the Japan prize—all these have been yours. You are a member of the European Academy, the Norwegian Academy, and US National Academy of Science. Your list of degrees honoris causa goes on for two pages and spans the world from Guelph to Tel Aviv. You gave 35 years to the creative freedom that your position as a Research Fellow at IBM afforded you. Yale feels lucky and grateful to have had you as an influential teacher and member of its community for seventeen. Esteemed colleague of Yale mathematicians and scientists, loyal and beloved Saybrook Fellow, as you retire from New Haven to continue your intellectual progress the Yale faculty pays you homage.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans