Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!NAS!JTUCKER From: JTUCKER@NAS.BITNET (John Tucker) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.frac-l Subject: Brooks/Matelski & Mandelbrot Message-ID: Date: 9 Feb 90 12:07:00 GMT Sender: 'FRACTAL' discussion list Reply-To: 'FRACTAL' discussion list Lines: 43 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway X-To: FNKWP@ALASKA.BITNET *cc: John Tucker The following is quoted from a `reply' essay (to a review essay by Steven G. Krantz of two books on fractals that immediately precedes it), entitled "Some `Facts' That Evaporate Upon Examination", written by Mandelbrot. (It appears in the Fall 1989 issue of THE MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCER, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 17-19): THE BROOKS-MATELSKI REFERENCE. Krantz tells us "the `Mandelbrot set' was NOT invented by Mandelbrot but occurs explicitly in the literature a couple of years before the term `Mandelbrot set' was coined." As is well known, I "invented" that set in 1979-80 and fully published it in 1980 (in a widely quoted paper in ANNALS OF THE NY ACADEMY OF SCIENCES). Indeed, this happened "a couple of years" before 1982, when the term was coined by A. Douady and J. H. Hubbard. .... ..., my thoughts "were provoked" over months and years, helped by long practice with analogous situations elsewhere. During 1979 and 1980, I lectured on [the Mandelbrot set] M at Harvard, M.I.T., an A.M.S. summer meeting on W. Thurston's work, and (most important, perhaps) at Orsay (Paris-Sud) and Bures (I.H.E.S.). There I spent many hours and many meals describing M to Douady in as great detail as requested. Our discussion made him drop what he had been doing before, and he and Hubbard have made major contributions to iteration theory. Subsequently I spoke at D. Sullivan's CUNY Seminar and at Princeton to J. Milnor and W. Thurston. The set in question was not credited to anyone else at the time. ... STEVEN G. KRANTZ REPLIES The ideas of Brooks and Matelski were presented at a conference in 1978, and well pre-date any contribution that Mandelbrot may have made in 1979-80. [Please note that the Brooks-Matelski paper was presented at a 1978 Stony Brook conference on Riemann Surfaces and Related Topics, and was published in the ANNALS OF MATH., STUDIES 97, Princeton University Press (1981). John R. Tucker, Staff Officer Board on Mathematical Sciences National Academy of Sciences Washington, D.C.]