Theories for New Frontiers

Theories that change the world rarely get accepted easily. But you knew that already. Here’s what is new: I used to think that this was a problem only in fields where you have an existing (and usually entrenched) theory. Surely the problem shouldn’t occur if a theory is creating a new field altogether? After all, who would be the old guard who would feel threatened or fight it, right?

Wrong.

Poor Louis Bachelier learnt that the hard way. He wrote his doctoral thesis in 1900 and his idea was to bring probability theory into the world of finance. The man had invented mathematical finance! So who was getting in the way? Wasn’t this a new field?

His thesis evaluators! For 2 reasons:

1)      Maths was emerging from a period of crisis. Starting in 1860, many well-known theorems were shown to contain errors, which led mathematicians to fear that the foundation of their discipline was crumbling. So they chose to be conservative: did it make sense to say maths could now enter a new frontier when its base itself seemed riddled with holes?

2)   Remember, these guys were academics, guys who hate the idea of anything having a practical application, least of all in something as crass as money! You can almost see them shuddering in horror.

And so Bachelier's dissertation received a grade of honorable, and not tres honorable. And with­out a grade of tres honorable, poof! Bachelier's prospects as a professional mathematician vanished.

Looks like space isn’t the only frontier where one has to boldly go where no man one has gone before.