I Don't Seek Power And Do Not

I Didn't Feel Comfortable At First With Pure Mathematics, Or As A Professor Of Pure Mathematics. I Wanted To Do A Little Bit Of Everything And Explore The World.

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.

For Much Of My Life There Was No Place Where The Things I Wanted To Investigate Were Of Interest To Anyone.

My Fate Has Been That What I Undertook Was Fully Understood Only After The Fact.

Science Would Be Ruined If (like Sports) It Were To Put Competition Above Everything Else, And If It Were To Clarify The Rules Of Competition By Withdrawing Entirely Into Narrowly Defined Specialties. The Rare Scholars Who Are Nomads-by-choice Are Essential To The Intellectual Welfare Of The Settled Disciplines.