Benoit Mandelbrot

"In forming the"the notion of fractal... I put together certain
geometric shapes whose form is very irregular and very
fragmented, and coined the term fractal to denote them.
Fractals are characterized by the coexistence of distinctive
features of every conceivable linear size...computer graphics
played a central role in the acceptance of fractal geometry,
but a peripheral role in its genesis. That is, granted the
fascination that fractals now hold for the computer
practitioners, one is tempted to credit the emergence
of the new geometry to the availability of this new tool.
Actually, I formulated the theory of fractals when
computer graphics was in it's infancy. However, I let
its development be biased toward topics that lend
themselves to intuition-building illustrations...Thus,
the property of scaling that characterizes fractals is
not only present in Nature, but in some of Man's
most carefully crafted creations."
Benoit Mandelbrot