The Fractal Geometry of Nature Hardcover – January 1, 1982

This is a great book for someone looking to discover what all the hullabaloo is about fractals. It provides a wonderful insight into the mind of one of the great mathematical geniuses of our time, Benoit Mandelbrot. I think some people will find his writing style a bit too stodgy, almost arithmetical, but I find it interesting. I especially appreciate how marks off when he's going to be tangential with special brackets. Mandelbrot doesn't delve into too many rigorous mathematical proofs of the various topics he discusses. He broaches each subject in such a way that should be accessible to people from a wide array of sciences and disciplines. I don't recommend this book if you're trying to figure out how to create simple fractal programs. But I enthusiastically recommend it if you want to learn more about fractals, discover a new way to think about and understand nature, or are simply looking for a good bit of erudition.

beautiful bookamazing concepts

The magnum opus of a true genius. Within this book lies the legacy of a profound academic and perhaps the most rigorous and complete analysis of fractal geometries that has ever been created. It is a balanced look at fractal geometries that fills a niche for all levels of expertise. As a mathematical novice you can enjoy the pictures and narrative and as a master there is a trove of insight. If you are interested in how fractals are rife throughout nature and how these various geometries can be explained using Benoit's mathematics, this is the book for you.

Mandelbrot... R.I.P. my friend... he was an angel sent from infinity to infinity and beyond... although he is gone from the known human world, Mandelbrot is a fractal of the universe and forever spiraling deeper, yet closer, yet wait.. no.. farther.. no.. ah who knows. Fractals are mystery! Oh but hold on... I have this great book written by Mandelbrot on the Fractal Geometry of Nature! That'll tell me what i need to know about where Mandelbrot went in the afterlife. But come on, ok I'll get serious here, this book will get you into some trouble. This is no light darling sweetheart. This is not a book to the easy side of the galaxy of things. It's a full blown mathematical textbook of equations, expecting the average joe to be the all-in-one scientist abroad, just back from holiday and ready for the thick of it all. He dials in to his secretary to say, "Miriam--I want no phone calls today, you understand?? Under no circumstances shall I be answering any calls.. and NO interruptions... You got it!? NONE! WHATSOEVER!" ..and he slams the phone back in the cradle, blood pressure quickly rising, pops some stress-relievers, takes a seat at his work desk, and opens the book... The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Three weeks later his secretary finally gets the door open to his office by prying at the lock with her hairpin. She gasps! Turns her head and weeps.. the man had keeled over from dehydration and malnutrition, face down in The Fractal Geometry of Nature.

Of course I love this book; I read it for the first time when I was just a young teen; now upon re-reading it, I realize how difficult so much of the mathematical material is. Of course, Mandelbrot wrote it and labeled it as an 'essay', thus intended for a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds in order to reach a maximum audience, but his coining it as targeted for a 'broad' audience may have been referring to 'peers in similar fields' because despite all the math I took in college, much of the digressions in this book are lost on me. Still, so much of the content is accessible immediately through the written content and the visuals are unmistakably striking, especially for such old computer graphic technology. I would recommend this for anyone interested in the studies of fractal geometry, chaos theory, and turbulent dynamics.

This was a replacement, my old copy was water-damaged in storage. Every math nerd should have this book; it is interesting, well-written, and has lots of great illustrations.

I entered fractals for the first time in the early 90s after a had read about them in a fantastic book called Excursions in Modern Mathematics.I coded and created the Sirpinsky thereafter and have been hooked on the topic since.I bought this book to undestand what the discoverer of fractals thought and have not been dissapointed. I am enjoying every page of it.Buy it!

For the general public, this book helped set in motion the concepts of, and the potential to understand natures' geometry. this book also gives the ground work for the potential fin art and illustration more reflective of the geometry of nature - and a new tool for the arts. The graphics are still inspiring. A must for anyone intetrested in the Mandelbrot set, fractal geometry and the forms that evolve from chaotic dynamics.