Page "Fractal" Paragraph 2

The mathematical roots of the idea of fractals have been traced through a formal path of published works, starting in the 17th century with notions of recursion, then moving through increasingly rigorous mathematical treatment of the concept to the study of continuous but not differentiable functions in the 19th century, and on to the coining of the word fractal in the 20th century with a subsequent burgeoning of interest in fractals and computer-based modelling in the 21st century.

The term " fractal " was first used by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975.

Mandelbrot based it on the Latin frāctus meaning " broken " or " fractured ", and used it to extend the concept of theoretical fractional dimensions to geometric patterns in nature.