Fractals were first worked with by a man named Gaston Julia and his sets, which are known as the Julia sets.
However, since there weren't any computers when Julia was working with his sets, all he could do was draw them.
Below is an applet I designed in order to better explore what some of Gaston's sets looked like.
Paint By Constants: Julia Sets
Even though Gaston was the first to depict his sets and draw them, fractals weren't officially studied until Benoit Mandelbrot started studying them and presented their concept in 1919 (Debnath, 2006).
He started recognizing this phenomena in nature, where things like lightning and even cauliflower display self-recursive properties
where the closer you look, the more detailed display of a similar pattern you see.
Mandelbrot was able to use the computers at IBM in 1958 in order to look at formations of algorithms that show self-similarity (Camp, 2000).
He was able to start displaying the Julia sets on his computer, one of which became named after him. The picture is displayed below.
Although the math is still confusing to many mathematicians today, no one can deny the beauty of fractals
and how they are everywhere in the world around us.
