Virtual Museum of Computing

This exhibition provides some hyperlinks to material on Mandelbrot sets, and related fractals.

• For historical background, see short biographies of Benoit Mandelbrot (largely responsible for the present interest in Fractal Geometry) and Gaston Julia (of Julia set fame) in the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.

• An introduction to Julia and Mandelbrot Sets is available.

• A large colourful Mandelbrot set image is available locally.

• Many beautiful Mandelbrot pictures and other fractal pictures and animations are available from France.

• Try the recommended Mandelbrot and Julia Set Explorer, an interactive and colourful utility using a form with plenty of options and an "active map" image. See also a generator using forms, an index of images. From Clark University, USA.

• Explore the Mandelbrot set interactively using an "active map" image. Less colourful and with fewer options, but still good. Especially recommended for European visitors. See also the Mandelbrot Gallery of Mandelbrot set images selected by visitors. Provided at TU Delft, The Netherlands.

• Mandelbrot Explorer, from Greece. Selectable zoom in/out and drawing area. Colourful and good if you have a reasonable network link to Greece. Interlaced images are used so the fractal builds up nicely on the screen.

• Geometry of the Mandelbrot set. Test your knowledge!

• See a fractal gallery, including animation, a guest book, and hearing the Mandelbrot set!

• Mandelbrot movies are available from Department of Mathematics, University of Zagreb, Croatia.

• See also another good list of Web references for Julia and Mandelbrot sets, including further on-line image generators, images and movies, courses and other information, software, fractal Frequently Asked Questions and a bibliography.

• Complexity and Self-Organisation: Chaos and Fractals by Susan Stepney.

• Spanky Fractal Database including Fractint freeware fractal software for PCs.

• Fractals newsgroup for on-line discussion.

• ArtByMath Fractal Gallery (commercial CD-ROM).

• Mandelbrot generator in Java (including source code). Generates the output line by line on the screen.

• The Chaos Hypertextbook, including links. An excellent and recommended resource.

• The Mandelbrot Set, an interactive Java applet by Anthony Alto. Apparently slow because the output only appears when complete, but worth the wait.