Well, to me he was more than just "This Guy." As stubborn as I am to say that I actually look up to someone, this is the one person I am proud to have called a role model. While he may not be familiar to most of the population as the President or Michael Jackson, he definitely made a huge impact on the entire world by defining the way we observe things.
"This Guy" was Benoit Mandelbrot, the Father of Fractal Geometry. "Father" is quite the title to have in one's life; to have discovered something that was valid enough for you to be known as the founder of it.
I could post some definitions about Fractal Geometry here, but I think I'll try a nutshell explanation from my own definition. Fractal Geometry is much like viewing recursion. You see something, and the more you want to see (by zooming in) you see more of that same something. If you blow up your image, you will find the pattern of this repetition thus revealing the fractal. These fractals are defined by numbers which may sound super boring but if you just look at them you can find them to be quite stunning.
But I admire Mandelbrot's work and his visions because he viewed things totally outside the box, defied what other people said about him, and just researched for the sake of research. That kind of determination is pretty inspiring for a person like me, who is attempting to blend these Graphic Arts with these numbers of Maths and such.
Benoit Mandelbrot passed away last year (2010) but many people still admire the legacy that he left behind.
I felt like posting about Mandelbrot because I just came across this article on the New York Times from my news read:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/12/26/magazine/2010lives.html#view=beno_t_mandelbrot
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