For almost ten years chaos and fractals have been riding a wave that has enveloped many areas of mathematics and the natural sciences in its power, creativity and expanse. Traveling far beyond the traditional bounds of mathematics and science to the distant shores of popular culture, this wave captures the attention and enthusiasm of a worldwide audience.
The fourteen chapters of the book cover the central ideas and concepts of chaos and fractals as well as many related topics, including the Mandelbrot Set, julia Sets, Cellular Automata, L-Systems, Percolation and Strange Attractors. Each chapter is closed by a "Program of the Chapter" which provides computer code for a central experiment. Two appendices complement the book; the first, by Yuval Fisher, discusses the details and ideas of fractal image compression. The second, by Carl J. G. Evertsz and Benoit Mandelbrot, introduces the foundations and implications of multifractals.
The three computer-generated images below (the Feigenbaum diagram, the Mandelbrot set and the Lorenz attractor) are the icons of chaos theory and fractal geometry. They will be remembered as milestones in the deciphering of the secrets of nature.