Bruno de Finetti
| Bruno De Finetti | |
|---|---|
| Born |
13 June 1906 Innsbruck, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 20 July 1985 (aged 79) Rome, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Alma mater | Politecnico di Milano |
| Doctoral advisor | Giulio Vivanti |
Bruno de Finetti (13 June 1906 – 20 July 1985) was an Italian probabilist statistician and actuary, noted for the "operational subjective" conception of probability. The classic exposition of his distinctive theory is the 1937 "La prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives," which discussed probability founded on the coherence of betting odds and the consequences of exchangeability.
De Finetti was born in Innsbruck, Austria and studied mathematics at Politecnico di Milano. He graduated in 1927 writing his thesis under the supervision of Giulio Vivanti. After graduation, he worked as an actuary and a statistician at Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (National Institute of Statistics) in Rome and, from 1931, the Trieste insurance company Assicurazioni Generali.
He published extensively (17 papers in 1930 alone, according to Lindley) and acquired an international reputation in the small world of probability mathematicians. He taught mathematical analysis in Padua and then won a chair in Financial Mathematics at Trieste University (1939). In 1954 he moved to the Sapienza University of Rome, first to another chair in Financial Mathematics and then, from 1961 to 1976, one in the Calculus of Probabilities. De Finetti developed his ideas on subjective probability in the 1920s independently of Frank P. Ramsey. Still, according to the preface of his Theory of Probability, he drew on ideas of Harold Jeffreys, I. J. Good and B.O. Koopman. He only became known in the Anglo-American statistical world in the 1950s when L. J. Savage, who had independently adopted subjectivism, drew him into it; another great champion was Dennis Lindley. De Finetti died in Rome.
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