The history of fractals in the strict sense is fairly recent. Suddenly opened in 1975 with the revolutionary publication “A Theory of Fractal Sets” of mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, which became the basis of its fundamental text and manifest.

In “The Fractal Geometry of Nature” Mandelbrot, has coined the term fractal which derives from the Latin word “Fractus” (split), because the size of a fractal is not whole. The fractal geometric figures are characterized by repeated indefinitely until the same reason on an ever smaller scale.

The characteristic of these figures, a feat which derives its name, is that although they may be represented (if you do not claim to represent endless iterations, ie processing for which it retains a special plea geometric) in a conventional two – or three dimensions, their size is not whole. In fact, the length of a fractal “plan” can not be definitively measured, but depends strictly by the number of iterations in which you put the initial figure.

Mathematicians as Waclaw Sierpinski, David Hilber, Georg Cantor and Helge von Koch gave shape to the first fractals, mainly for the pleasure of abstraction, without having the idea of ultimate meaning that would take. Many of them considered these pathological forms, cumbersome or even unpleasant. They would be certainly surprised to learn that today are remembered mainly thanks to those forms that both disgusted them!

Some of these pioneers had good reasons for not appreciating those geometric aberrations. They had indeed realized that Mandelbrot had revealed something that called into question and threatened some of the cornerstones of their discipline. We know now that the era in which these scientists lived (1875 – 1925) was, in fact, a period of crisis for mathematics. Increasingly, the mathematical encounters forms that were unsettling the concepts of space, area, distance and size.