Fractals*, by Diana Der-Hovanessian

Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare - Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid alone began to formulate
the relation of circle, plane and sphere
in equations making it quite clear
it was symmetry that we must contemplate.

He left the jagged convoluted form,
rambling rivers, wind turbulence and rain;
ignored clouds, coastline and storms,
and the whorl of tree, skin and terrain,

to map the triangle, cone and square.
Euclid measured order and left the knot
of chaos to be unraveled by Mandelbrot
who found truth in the course of blood and air.
Euclid looked on beauty stark and bare,
but Mandelbrot appraised her everywhere.

* [Fractal geometry was] invented in 1975 by Benoit Mandelbrot to find order in chaotic shapes and processes

(Source: Verse & Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics, Edited by Kurt Brown, 1998)

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line. —Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature

In 1982, Mandelbrot updated and expanded fractal geometry in The Fractal Geometry of Nature.  For more on Mandelbrot -- including pictures of fractals -- see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoît_Mandelbrot