Mandelbrot's first foray into fractal economics, when he was discovering ways to use computers to predict fractal systems at IBM in the '60s, had major impact on the field.

FORBES: Mandelbrot: A Math Maverick Takes Stock

Trees, clouds, numerous patterns that we see in daily life--all turned out to be fractal in nature, described by a branch of mathematics that Mandelbrot had started.

FORBES: Mandelbrot: A Math Maverick Takes Stock

One team, for instance, inserted the virus into a program running a Mandelbrot set, a complex, mathematics-based structure named after the father of fractal geometry.

FORBES: Catching The Hacking Bug