Houthakker, a Harvard economics professor, had invited Mandelbrot to give a talk, and when the young mathematician arrived at Littauer Center, the stately economics building just north of Harvard Yard, he was startled to see his findings already charted on the older man’s blackboard. Mandelbrot made a querulous joke—how should my diagram have materialized ahead of my lecture?—but Houthakker didn’t know what Mandelbrot was talking about. The diagram had nothing to do with income distribution; it represented eight years of cotton prices.
