I am looking for the origin of a quote found in a mathematics textbook and attributed to Mandelbrot.
I'm convinced that a math book we used in high school had this quote in it:
In order to simplify, one must complexify, i.e., see simple things in the complex plane.
The book, which looked like it was printed in the '90s, attributed this quote to Benoît Mandelbrot.
However, the Internet does not seems to have any mentions of this quote, and in particular not by Mandelbrot.
Now I wonder… has anyone heard of this quote or a variation of it? And could it have been said by Mandelbrot, perhaps in a talk or so?
My book was in Dutch but the quote itself was printed in English. The original quote might have been in a different language, perhaps French; however, I don't find any results either when looking for its translated keywords.
I'm going to deviate from my usual policy of never answering a question because I can't "really" post images in comments, and complex google searches may yield different results for different people.
The answer: Gaston Julia
The link: https://www.google.com/search?q=gaston+julia+%22complexify%22+simplify&newwindow=1&tbm=bks&ei=IILVYtXxBYyG0PEPpty-uAw&ved=0ahUKEwjVgbmG5oL5AhUMAzQIHSauD8cQ4dUDCAk&uact=5&oq=gaston+julia+%22complexify%22+simplify&gs_lcp=Cg1nd3Mtd2l6LWJvb2tzEANQ2AdY9xZgmhpoAHAAeACAAVyIAfgBkgEBM5gBAKABAcABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz-books
The screenshot:
As https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&hl=en&q=inauthor:%22Gaston+Julia%22&tbm=bks notes, Julia wrote almost entirely in French, so the expression was most likely translated to English. To find an original source, you might have to change the search terms.