October 14, 2010

2010Simon MacCorkindale, English actor, director, and producer (born 1952)^[†]

Simon Charles Pendered MacCorkindale was a British actor, film director, writer, and producer from Ely, England. He spent much of his childhood moving around owing to his father's career as an officer with the Royal Air Force. Poor eyesight prevented him from following a similar career in the RAF, so he instead planned to become a theatre director. Training at Studio 68 of Theatre Arts in London, he started work as an actor, making his West End debut in 1974. He went on to appear in numerous roles in television, including the series I, Claudius and Jesus of Nazareth, before starring as Simon Doyle in the film Death on the Nile (1978). This proved to be a breakthrough role. He appeared in a variety of films and TV series including Quatermass (1979), The Riddle of the Sands (1979), The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and Jaws 3-D (1983).

2010Benoit Mandelbrot, Polish-American mathematician and economist (born 1924)^[†]

Benoit B. Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature.