Louis Bachelier's Theory of Speculation: The Origins of Modern Finance

French doctoral student, Louis Bachelier, successfully defended his thesis Théorie de la Spéculation at the Sorbonne.

This book provides a new translation of Bachelier's seminal work.

Bachelier's thesis is a remarkable document on two counts. In mathematical terms Bachelier's achievement was to introduce many of the concepts of what is now known as stochastic analysis. His purpose, however, was to give a theory for the valuation of financial options. He came up with a formula that is both correct on its own terms and surprisingly close to the Nobel Prize-winning solution to the option pricing problem by Fischer Black, Myron Scholes, and Robert Merton in 1973.

This book offers great insight into the historical developments of probability and mathematical finance.