Julia Gaston

Julia Fractal

Gaston Maurice Julia (Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria, February 3, 1893-Paris, France, March 19, 1978) was a French mathematician.

Biography

His parents were of Catalan origin ^{[citation required]}., established in Algeria, where Gaston was born. Julia was a forerunner in what is now known as fractals. He was the first to study the subject and to explain how, through a sequence defined by induction, a set can be made from any complex function, a set whose border is impossible to draw by hand because it is of infinite length, among other properties.

His notoriety culminated in the publication of his article Report on the iteration of rational functions (Mémoire sur l'itération des fonctions rationnelles) in the French magazine mathematics Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées. This 199-page article earned him an award from the French Academy of Sciences.

In his lifetime, however, he did not have much fame. Indeed, he died before fractals became very popular, in the early eighties. This belated interest, which is still alive today, was due to their second father, the Polish mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who had a huge advantage over Gaston Maurice Julia: he was able to take advantage of the invention of the computer. All the properties of the fractals that Julia established by dint of calculations and deductions, with paper and pencil, could be observed on the screen of him, Mandelbrot, and the millions of owners of personal computers with graphics mode. In the late 1980s, artists became interested in the Mandelbrot set and, to a lesser extent, Julia sets, which are intrinsically related.

Gaston Julia did not have much luck in his private life either, since he had to interrupt his promising studies at the age of 20 because of the First World War, where he lost his nose. Numerous surgeries failed to restore her and he had to wear a small mask for the rest of his life.

Work

• Oeuvres, 6 v., Paris, Gauthier-Villars 1968-1970 (eds. Jacques Dixmier, Michel Hervé, prologue of Julia).

• Leçons sur les Fonctions Uniformes à Point Singulier Essentiel IsoléGauthier-Villars 1924

• Eléments de géométrie infinitésimaleGauthier-Villars 1927

• Cours de Cinématique, Gauthier-Villars 1928, 2nd ed. 1936

• Exercices d'Analyse4 v. Gauthier-Villars, 1928 - 1938, 2a ed. 1944, 1950

• Principes Géométriques d'Analyse2 v. Gauthier-Villars, 1930, 1932

• Essai sur le Développment de la Théorie des Fonctions de Variables ComplexesGauthier-Villars 1933

• Introduction Mathématique aux Theories Quantiques2 v. Gauthier-Villars 1936, 1938, 2a ed. 1949, 1955

• Eléments d'algèbreGauthier-Villars 1959

• Cours de GéométrieGauthier-Villars 1941

• Cours de géométrie infinitésimaleGauthier-Villars, 2nd ed. 1953

• Exercises de géométrie2 v. Gauthier-Villars 1944, 1952

• Leçons sur la représentation conforme des aires simplement connexesGauthier-Villars 1931, 2.a ed. 1950

• Leçons sur la représentation conforme des aires multiplement connexesGauthier-Villars 1934

• Traité de Théorie de FonctionsGauthier-Villars 1953

• Leçons sur les fonctions monogènes uniforms d'une variable complexeGauthier-Villars 1917

• Étude sur les formes binaires non quadratiques à indéterminées réelles ou complexes, ou à indéterminées conjuguéesGauthier-Villars 1917