Re: probability theory notation
Actually it was a Scottish botanist named Robert Brown who first studied the phenomenom in 1827. Jan Ingenhousz had noticed it 62 years earlier, but Ingenhouszian motion took too long to say. Brown was observing pollen grains that had fallen on water, Ingenhousz noticed carbon particles on alcohol. Louis Bachelier gave the first mathematical explanation in 1900 in "The theory of speculation"; however the mathematical model call Brownian motion is not a good model of the physical Brownian motion studied by Brown and Ingenhousz.
The important thing about Brownian motion historically is that it provided the definitive proof of the molecular theory of matter.
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