Mandelbrot thinks this isn't playing by the rules. "It's reminiscent of the model they had of the Earth going around the sun in a circle," he says. "It went in a little circle and then a big circle." ...

Benoit Mandelbrot, the Polish-born, French and American mathematician, known as the "father of fractal geometry," is celebrated in today's Google Doodle, on what would have been his 96th birthday.