I have always been attracted by the idea to describe nature by using mathematical equations. The concept that maths is not just a man-made construct, but it could be embedded in the ‘natural’ occurrence of time and matter, has always been promoted by scientists of all kinds. Only recently, though, due to the work and active communication of Prof. Benoit Mandelbrot (and his predecessors, Fatou and Julia, to name a few), a new mathematical theory and related objects further filled the gap between mathematics and nature.

Fractals are geometrical shapes with dimensions that go beyond the classic Euclidean classification (0: point, 1: line, 2: plane, 3: solid). They fill the space with fractional dimensions (e.g. 1.6), meaning tha they can occupy more than a line (1)  but less than an area (2). In biology, this is the way the bronchial tree, the vessel ramification, and the neuronal branching work.

Another important aspect is that what we observe at a large scale can also be observed at a smaller scale (self-similarity), and this process repeats at all magnification levels. Again in the biomedical domain, we can expect that in a geometrically fractal structure, also the processes could behave similarly at many levels of temporal magnification.