The father of fractal geometry, Benoit Mandelbrot (1924–2010), describes in his memoirs his life and scientific career in detail, which was almost as jagged as the objects he became famous for studying. In a colorful mosaic of storytelling and anecdotes, we move from the Warsaw ghetto to the rigid mathematical elite of post-war France, from Caltech and MIT to the Geneva psychologist Piaget, from IBM to Yale and Harvard – here Mandelbrot meticulously recorded encounters with everyone who impacted him and influenced his path. He does not downplay his achievements; he is well aware that his discovery is groundbreaking enough to deserve the epithet 'Keplerian,' because the world is no longer the same after it. Suddenly, we gained a tool to grasp complex, jagged, and irregular phenomena that unexpectedly emerge in nature and human society.
