Louis Bashelier
Louis Jean-Bitiste Alphonse Bashelie was born on March 11, 1870. The famous French mathematician who managed to turn the whole 20th century upside down. He was the first person to model the Brownian movement in his dissertation “Theory of Speculation”. His theory was a way of calculating the prices of options, using advanced mathematical techniques in the field of finance.
Louis’ childhood took place in the city of Le Havre. His father, an amateur vein dealer, was an amateur scientist and vice consul of Venezuela in Le Avre. Beschalier’s mother was the daughter of a major bank manager. Louis remained an orphan right after graduating from university, where he received a bachelor’s degree. After his parents died, he had to take responsibility for the family business. This allowed the young guy to learn the practice of the financial market. In 1892 he moved to Paris, where he entered the Sorbonne, which graduated almost perfectly.
Protecting his thesis, Bashelie continues to develop the theory of diffusion processes. In 1909, he became a “free professor” of the Sorbonne. In 1914, his book “Games, Case and Risk” was published in the world. With the help of the Council of the University of Paris, Louis gets a professorship at the Sorbonne, but with the onset of the First World War, he is drafted into the army as a private. After the end of the war, he takes the place of an absent professor in Besancon. When the professor returned, Beschalier went to Dijone University. Then there was work in Rennes, and in 1927 he finally got a professorship in Besancon, where he has been working for 10 years.
Surprisingly, Beschalier’s theories were not noticed until 50 years after she left. The youthful approach to the mathematical calculation of the process of formation of state prices for bonds was five years ahead of Einstein’s discovery of the movement of electrons, which became the basis for the theory of comprehension of financial activity. Beschalier’s theory was several times more than the previous theories describing the current behavior of financial markets.
The main postulate of the “Theory of Speculation” was that “A speculator in mathematical expectation can only hope for zero”. Conclusions from this thesis are now used in almost all financial operations – trading strategies, the use of derivative securities, as well as in the technique of securities management.