One wintry afternoon in 1975, aware of the parallel currents emerging in physics, preparing his first major work for publication in book form, Mandelbrot decided he needed a name for his shapes, his dimensions, and his geometry. His son was home from school, and Mandelbrot found himself thumbing through the boy’s Latin dictionary. He came across the adjective fractus, from the verb frangere, to break. The resonance of the main English cognates—fracture and fraction—seemed appropriate. Mandelbrot created the word (noun and adjective, English and French) fractal.
