Who is Benoit Mandelbrot from The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable and what is their importance? | The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Questions & Answers

If the author had a hero, Mandelbrot filled those shoes. He had developed fractal geometry, and that impressed Taleb to no end. Mandelbrot and the author became close friends in France, and when Mandelbrot was relocating to the United States, he offered Taleb any books from his personal library that Taleb wanted. Taleb accepted the invitation and enjoyed the books immensely.
Later Mandelbrot was castigated for his attempts at applying fractal geometry to other fields of study, such as sociology and economics. Taleb thought this was a brilliant method of turning Black Swans into gray swans, or events with some degree of accurate predictability. While Taleb was writing his book, Mandelbrot still lived in the United States. He died in 2010.

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