Michael Barnsley

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Michael Barnsley is a researcher and an entrepreneur who has worked on fractal compression; he holds several patents on the technology. In 1987 he founded Iterated Systems Incorporated, and in 1988 he published a book entitled Fractals Everywhere. He has also published these scientific papers: "Existence and Uniqueness of Orbital Measures", "Theory and Applications of Fractal Tops", "A Fractal Valued Random Iteration Algorithm and Fractal Hierarchy", "V-variable fractals and superfractals", "Fractal Transformations" and "Ergodic Theory, Fractal Tops and Colour Stealing".

Barnsley was one of the founders of a business effort devoted to fractal image compression, 'Iterated Systems'. This company morphed into an 'image archive management' company called 'Media Bin' which appears to have ceased business operations in 2004, after apparently divesting itself of affiliation with Barnsley.

Fractal image compression failed to make an impact on the image data market, principally because its advantages, though real, failed to justify costs of use — as opposed to communal methods invoking Jpeg. Faster computer and internet speeds removed most of the objections to use posed by Jpeg, and thus obviated the need for the far more bandwidth efficient fractal image compression.

Currently (2005) he is on the faculty of the Mathematical Sciences Institute of the Australian National University. Barnsley held a previous faculty position at Georgia Tech.