The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick download
mandelbrot grew up in the warsaw ghetto with his polish mother and jewish father, both very poor. as a jew, he was forbidden to go to school, but his strong mind and interest in mathematics got him special permission to learn maths and physics from his uncle, an expert in mathematical analysis, the synthesis of calculus and algebra. it was a lonely existence, his parents being busy with their own lives and his childhood friends-to-be having gone to high school. life at home was claustrophobic: the family moved constantly, from one ghetto to another. they were thrown out of each as the authorities identified the inhabitants. the family survived, their nomadism meant they were never registered at a single address. when mandelbrot started school, the polish authorities told him he was to go to a catholic boarding school. the religious indoctrination was not to his liking. after the uprising in warsaw that began in august 1944, the family moved to the west. father, a professional violinist, was sent to a concentration camp, where he was gassed to death. mother, with mandelbrots brother and his mother, was hiding in a forest. the two siblings survived but their grandmother and aunt were killed in an explosion. mother and benoit were rounded up, mother sent to auschwitz and benoit to a childrens home in poland where he lived through the end of the war. the jewish children in his orphanage were deported to a camp in germany, where they were killed. a year after the war ended, mandelbrot, his mother, and brother were forced to leave poland for france. they lived as exiles in paris, warsaw, and then paris again.