What are Fractals?
When talking about fractals, Mandelbrot’s name is sure to arise in the conversation. Often referred to as “The Father of Fractal Geometery”, as he actually coined the term fractal. He developed a particularly beautiful fractal set based on a simple iteration applied to complex numbers. Here is an example of the Mandelbrot Set with the starting point for the iteration taken as the square root of five. [2]
However, Mandelbrot acknowledges none other than Gottfried Leibniz as his inspiration. Many refer to Leibniz idea of self-similarity as one of the earliest mathematical predecessors of fractal geometery. Although Leibniz did not explicitly use the term fractal (since it did not come about until Mandelbrot), he did use his understanding of self-similarity in his theology.