Full Name: Benoit Mandelbrot

Lived Between: 1924-

Nationality: Polish

Primary Occupation: Mathematician

Claim to Fame: Benoit Mandelbrot is the IBM researcher who successfully showed the occurrence of fractal patterns in nature and in mathematics, and has become somewhat of a pop culture icon due to the interest in fractal geometry generated by his work during the early 1990s.

Recommended Book: Fractal Geometry of Nature -- Benoit B. Mandelbrot; Hardcover

Recommended Link: http://www.fractovia.org/people/mandelbrot.html