Antoine Augustin Cournot (; 28 August 180131 March 1877) was a French

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and mathematician who also contributed to the development of economics.

Biography

Antoine Augustin Cournot was born at Gray, Haute-Saône. In 1821 he entered one of the most prestigious Grandes Écoles, the École Normale Supérieure, and, according to Sandmo:

in 1823 he took a license degree in mathematics at Sorbonne University. He then became the private secretary of a field marshal who required assistance in writing his memoirs. This position left Cournot with considerable time for his own pursuits. In the course of his ten years in the field marshal's employment he took two doctoral degrees, one in mechanics and one in astronomy. In addition, he published a number of articles and even acquired a degree in law.

Subsequently, Cournot held positions as professor of mathematics, chief examiner for undergraduate students, and rector of

Dijon Academy Dijon (, , ) (dated) * it, Digione * la, Diviō or * lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920. The earliest ...

. By the time Cournot died in 1877, he was nearly blind.

Work

Economics

Cournot was mainly a mathematician, but had some influence in economics. His theories on monopolies and duopolies are still prevalent. In 1838 the book ''Researches on Mathematical Principles of the Theory of Wealth'' was published, in which he used the application of the formulas and symbols of mathematics in economic analysis. This book was strongly criticized and scarcely successful during Cournot's lifetime. He attempted nonetheless to rewrite it twice. It is influential in economics today. Today many economists believe this book to be the point of departure for modern economic analysis. Cournot introduced the ideas of functions and probability into economic analysis. He derived the first formula for the rule of

supply and demand In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a ...

as a function of price and in fact was the first to draw supply and demand curves on a graph , anticipating the work of

Alfred Marshall Alfred Marshall (26 July 1842 – 13 July 1924) was an English economist, and was one of the most influential economists of his time. His book '' Principles of Economics'' (1890) was the dominant economic textbook in England for many years. I ...

by roughly thirty years. The

Cournot duopoly Cournot competition is an economic model used to describe an industry structure in which companies compete on the amount of output they will produce, which they decide on independently of each other and at the same time. It is named after Antoine Au ...

model developed in his book also introduced the concept of a (pure strategy)

Nash equilibrium In game theory, the Nash equilibrium, named after the mathematician John Nash, is the most common way to define the solution of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players. In a Nash equilibrium, each player is assumed to know the equili ...

, the

Reaction function In game theory, the best response is the strategy (or strategies) which produces the most favorable outcome for a player, taking other players' strategies as given (; ). The concept of a best response is central to John Nash's best-known contribu ...

and best-response dynamics. Cournot believed that economists must utilize the tools of mathematics only to establish probable limits and to express less stable facts in more absolute terms. He further held that the practical uses of mathematics in economics do not necessarily involve strict numerical precision. In the field of economics he is best known for his work in the field of

oligopoly An oligopoly (from Greek ὀλίγος, ''oligos'' "few" and πωλεῖν, ''polein'' "to sell") is a market structure in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of large sellers or producers. Oligopolies often result from ...

theory— Cournot competition which is named after him.

Philosophy

Cournot worked on

determinism Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...

(in physics) and chance. Unlike Pierre-Simon de Laplace, who thought that nothing happens by chance, and Aristotle, who thought that randomness and causality had nothing to do which each other, Cournot united the concepts, defining randomness as the encounter of two independent causal series.. This definition allows randomness even in perfectly deterministic events, and is used to generate random numbers by the combination of unrelated signals (for instance, temperature and sound).

References

External links

"Antoine Augustin Cournot" in ''New School Profiles''
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cournot, Antoine Augustin 1801 births 1877 deaths 19th-century French economists 19th-century French philosophers People from Gray, Haute-Saône French Roman Catholics 19th-century French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery Mathematical economists 19th-century French male writers