Pages – ; Locations 675 – 860

Mandelbrot’s youth is about promise and his family’s focus on survival.  In Chapter 3 we find our young student in France with a need to exceed in education, but with the reader knowing that war and atrocity lie in his future.

Best Quote(s)

“By pulling up their deep roots in a community that only a few years later vanished in smoke, my lucid and decisive parents saved us all and earned the utmost gratitude.” Chapter 3, Location 681

Chapter two told us of the wonderful upbringing, education and life lessons that Mandelbrot experienced in Poland – all of which were wiped away with the Nazi invasion and Holocaust.  The lessons of his parents’ focus on survival is repeated throughout the book.

“Each time I recall that successful exam, my heart rejoices. Lady Luck is blind and needs assistance. In 1936, my parents assisted by moving out of Poland. In 1937, I was called to assist—and I did.”  Chapter 3, Location 795

From Mandelbrot’s mind, “My parents kept us alive – and to make the most of it I had to nail that test.  What fortune!”

“A belated benefit from my years of Latin is that they helped me correctly coin new words—like “fractal.”” Chapter 3, Location 833

Mandelbrot’s writing follows his study of roughness – we know where the story is going, and still the book plays out like a mystery.  We know the ending – otherwise who would read this autobiography?  Throughout he foreshadows his contribution to science and math.

Page by Page Review

675

“At age fifty she had chosen to be a lonely housewife living in a foreign slum.”

681

“By pulling up their deep roots in a community that only a few years later vanished in smoke, my lucid and decisive parents saved us all and earned the utmost gratitude.”

687

“The small number of horses and the large number of cars made me realize that cars retired in Paris began a new life in Warsaw.”

693

“When Greek and Roman statuary began to be dug out and long-reigning dynasties started collecting great art, the pope chose first, followed by the king of France, then by English, Russian, and German royalty and amateurs.”

699

“The first bicycle (low, wooden, and with no pedals, propelled by feet pushing the road), the first motorcar (a monster powered by steam that arguably inspired the creator of thermodynamics, physicist Sadi Carnot), the first airplane to actually, if very briefly, fly (Clément Ader’s batlike contraption), the first plane to cross the English Channel (Louis Blériot’s)—these and many comparable marvels of human ingenuity were hidden under thick soot in this dark Gothic-era abbatial church.”

704

“Its name, the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), is old-fashioned but tells it all: here the nation preserves the originals of its greatest practical thinkers’ greatest achievements.”

717

“Who would dare begrudge a man who, compared to his youngest brother, had achieved so little.”

“He must have also felt the need to reintroduce himself to his sons and his wife of twenty years.”

733

“We knew hardly anyone in Paris, so our social life dropped overnight from that of a big extended family to almost nothing.”

754

“Parents and sons were forbidden to speak Polish, and it worked beyond belief.”

765

“Larousse Encyclopédie, together with decades of bound volumes of its updates. In no time, I read them from cover to cover.”

771

“a gold twenty-franc coin used during the reign of Emperor Napoléon III (1852–70). Had the previous tenant taken it along, he might have purchased his survival.”

777

“A classic slum dweller named Repkowski, he was to stay in Paris and vanish during the Holocaust.”

795

“Each time I recall that successful exam, my heart rejoices. Lady Luck is blind and needs assistance. In 1936, my parents assisted by moving out of Poland. In 1937, I was called to assist—and I did.”

818

“…the kinds of people who today would supervise Ph.D. dissertations were teaching eleven-year-olds. They lavished on me far more than any rightful share of their time,…”

833

“A belated benefit from my years of Latin is that they helped me correctly coin new words—like “fractal.””

860

“My parents were trained to hope and work for the best—but also to be ready to manage the worst.”

“I complied, and this is the first time I bring up this episode.”

Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–58),

“On another of Szolem’s visits, Father made a point of telling him in my presence that to survive and help his siblings, he had abandoned study and instead he became an apprentice. Must I follow the same path?”