This ASI- which was also the 28th session of the Seminaire de
mathematiques superieures of the Universite de Montreal - was devoted to
Fractal Geometry and Analysis. The present volume is the fruit of the
work of this Advanced Study Institute. We were fortunate to have with us
Prof. Benoit Mandelbrot - the creator of numerous concepts in Fractal
Geometry - who gave a series of lectures on multifractals, iteration of
analytic functions, and various kinds of fractal stochastic processes.
Different foundational contributions for Fractal Geometry like measure
theory, dy- namical systems, iteration theory, branching processes are
recognized. The geometry of fractal sets and the analytical tools used
to investigate them provide a unifying theme of this book. The main
topics that are covered are then as follows. Dimension Theory. Many
definitions of fractional dimension have been proposed, all of which
coincide on "regular" objects, but often take different values for a
given fractal set. There is ample discussion on piecewise estimates
yielding actual values for the most common dimensions (Hausdorff,
box-counting and packing dimensions). The dimension theory is mainly
discussed by Mendes-France, Bedford, Falconer, Tricot and Rata.
Construction of fractal sets. Scale in variance is a fundamental
property of fractal sets.