iomikron:

Although fractals and strange attractors are terms appeared quite lately, there were scientists at the beggining of the 20th century who approached very similar issues and made huge contributions to the field.

One of them was Gaston Julia, a French mathematician. In his early age Julia developed a keen interest in mathematics and music. At the age of 21 he was forced to interrupt his studies and participated in World War I. During an attack he suffered a severe injury, losing his nose. After the war, at the age of 23, Julia wrote a 199-page article developing the notion of iteration of a rational function. 

Iteration is the quintessence of computational performance. It was needed more than 50 years of intensive technological development to build computers and be able to see the structures that Julia described in his seminal paper.