Fractals: A User's Guide for the Natural Sciences explains Mandelbrot's fractal geometry and describes some of its applications in the natural world. Written to enable students and researchers to master the methods of this timely subject, the book steers a middle course between the formality of many papers in mathematics and the informality of picture-orientated books on fractals. It is both a logically developed text and an essential `fractals for users' handbook.

A deeply detailed discussion of fractals in biology, heterogeneous chemistry, polymers, and the earth sciences. Beginning with a general introduction to fractal geometry it continues with eight chapters on self-organized criticality, rough surfaces and interfaces, random walks, chemical reactions, and fractals in chemisty, biology, and medicine. A special chapter entitled "Computer Exploration of Fractals, Chaos, and Cooperativity" presents computer demonstrations of fractal models: 14 programs are included on a 3 1/2" MS-DOS diskette which run on any PC with at least 1 MB RAM and a EGA or VGA graphics card, 16 colors.

This book is based on notes for the course Fractals:lntroduction, Basics and Perspectives given by MichaelF. Barnsley, RobertL. Devaney, Heinz-Otto Peit gen, Dietmar Saupe and Richard F. Voss. The course was chaired by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and was part of the SIGGRAPH '87 (Anaheim, California) course pro gram. Though the five chapters of this book have emerged from those courses we have tried to make this book a coherent and uniformly styled presentation as much as possible. It is the first book which discusses fractals solely from the point of view of computer graphics. Though fundamental concepts and algo rithms are not introduced and discussed in mathematical rigor we have made a serious attempt to justify and motivate wherever it appeared to be desirable. Ba sic algorithms are typically presented in pseudo-code or a description so close to code that a reader who is familiar with elementary computer graphics should find no problem to get started. Mandelbrot's fractal geometry provides both a description and a mathemat ical model for many of the seemingly complex forms and patterns in nature and the sciences. Fractals have blossomed enormously in the past few years and have helped reconnect pure mathematics research with both natural sciences and computing. Computer graphics has played an essential role both in its de velopment and rapidly growing popularity. Conversely, fractal geometry now plays an important role in the rendering, modelling and animation of natural phenomena and fantastic shapes in computer graphics.

Written in a style that is accessible to a wide audience, The Fractal Geometry of Nature inspired popular interest in this emerging field. Mandelbrot's unique style, and rich illustrations will inspire readers of all backgrounds.

For almost ten years chaos and fractals have been enveloping many areas of mathematics and the natural sciences in their power, creativity and expanse. Reaching far beyond the traditional bounds of mathematics and science to the realms of popular culture, they have captured the attention and enthusiasm of a worldwide audience. The fourteen chapters of the book cover the central ideas and concepts, as well as many related topics including, the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Cellular Automata, L-Systems, Percolation and Strange Attractors, and each closes with the computer code for a central experiment. In the two appendices, Yuval Fisher discusses the details and ideas of fractal image compression, while Carl J.G. Evertsz and Benoit Mandelbrot introduce the foundations and implications of multifractals.

A modern up-to-date introduction for readers outside statistical physics. It puts emphasis on a clear understanding of concepts and methods and provides the tools that can be of immediate use in applications.

Fractals have changed the way we understand and study nature. This change has been brought about mainly by the work of B. B. Mandelbrot and his book The Fractal Geometry of Nature. Now here is a book that collects articles treating fractals in the earth sciences. The themes chosen span, as is appropriate for a discourse on fractals, many orders of magnitude; including earthquakes, ocean floor topography, fractures, faults, mineral crystallinity, gold and silver deposition. There are also chapters on dynamical processes that are fractal, such as rivers, earthquakes, and a paper on self-organized criticality. Many of the chapters discuss how to estimate fractal dimensions, Hurst exponents, and other scaling exponents. This book, in a way, represents a snapshot of a field in which fractals has brought inspiration and a fresh look at familiar subjects. New ideas and attempts to quantify the world we see around us are found throughout. Many of these ideas will grow and inspire further work, others will be superseded by new observations and insights, most probably with future contributions by the authors of these chapters.