ˈmandəlˌbrät-, -ˌbrȯt-, -ˌbrōt-, ˈmän- noun
Usage: usually capitalized M
Etymology: after Benoit Mandelbrot b 1924 American (Pol.-born) mathematician
: a fractal that roughly resembles a series of heart-shaped disks to which smaller disks are attached and that consists of the set of all points c in the complex plane for which the recursive expression z n + 1 = z n 2 + c for n = 0, 1, 2, 3 … with the starting value z 0 = 0 remains bounded as n approaches infinity