A certain confusion may befall us when we praise pioneers, especially while they are still with us. This hazard was apparent to the troubadour and know-hit wonder Jonathan Coulton, when he wrote one of the great tunes of popular science, ‘Mandelbrot Set’:

The song was released in October 2004, giving it a nice run of six years before its lyrics were compromised by Benoît Mandelbrot's passing in 2010. Even thus betrayed to history, ‘Mandelbrot Set’ still marks the contrast between extraordinary and ordinary lives, dividing those who change the world, in ways tiny or otherwise, from those who sing about them or merely ruminate. The life of ideas, perhaps like ontogeny, works through sudden transformations and upheavals, apparent impasses punctuated by instant, lateral shift. Understanding is catastrophic. Genius finds ‘infinite complexity […] defined by simple rules’, as Coulton also sings, though any such simplicity depends crucially on the beholder. Cosmic rules may have gorgeous clarity to a mind like Mandelbrot's. For the rest of us, the complexities of the universe are more often bewildering. Nothing is more bewildering, of course, than genius.