Just found out that Benoît B. Mandelbrot has passed away. It is somehow sad, when people that inspired you so much at a younger age (I got into fractals while at high school; the domain name reflects my fascination with fractals :-)) are no longer there, making you realize that all things come to an end. Sooner or later.
Nonetheless, I’m thankful for my stint into a fascinating branch of mathematics, re-discovering (simple) relationships and patterns, diving into programming graphics under Pascal. Otherwise, I’m not so sure whether I’d be where I am now. A lot of things led to another. And to quote Mandelbrot, when asked about his career, he said that though he had a conventional career, it wasn’t a straight line from beginning to end, but
It was a very crooked line.
The original Mandelbrot Set