The most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot Set ... is so complex as to be uncontrollable by mankind and describable as 'chaos'.

Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.

I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable

I conceived, developed and applied in many areas a new geometry of nature, which finds order in chaotic shapes and processes. It grew without a name until 1975, when I coined a new word to denote it, fractal geometry, from the Latin word for irregular and broken up, fractus. Today you might say that, until fractal geometry became organized, my life had followed a fractal orbit.

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics

I've been a professor of mathematics at Harvard and at Yale. At Yale for a long time. But I'm not a mathematician only. I'm a professor of physics, of economics, a long list. Each element of this list is normal. The combination of these elements is very rare at best.

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.