In economic thermodynamics, Edouard Guillaume (1881-1959) was a Swiss-French physicist noted for his work with his younger brother economist Georges Guillaume, first in giving mathematical assistance with Georges’ 1932 PhD dissertation "On the Fundamentals of the Economy with Rational Forecasting Techniques", which applied the formalism of thermodynamics to the theory of value. [1]
Rational mechanics
In the years to following Georges' 1932 dissertation, the Guillaume brothers elaborated on what they called “rational economics” (see: two cultures namesakes), a term conceptualized as the economic version of “rational mechanics” or the mathematical theory about the motion of objects, based on and derived from Newton’s laws on the relation between forces and motion. Though the term “rational mechanics” was used first by Leon Walras, then his first protégé Albert Aupetit, and later by François Divisia (1928), who credits Walras as introducing the term, the Guillaume brothers were said to have employed the term in an original sense.
Education
Edouard completed his PhD in physics at the University of Zurich in 1908, after which he worked at the Swiss Patent office at Bern, during the time when Albert Einstein was employed there. In the 1910s to 1920s, he did work on relativity theory (in an effort to “destroy” Einstein’s theory as he put it), and did work on Henri Poincare. He then moved to the Federal Office for Insurance, then became director of the Swiss insurance firm La Neuchateloise, and in 1936 became privat-docent at the University of Neuchatel. [1]
References
1. Guillaume, Georges and Guillaume, Edouard. (1932). Sur le Fundements de l’economique Rationelle: Avec une technique de la prevision (On the fundamentals of the economy with rational forecasting technique) (thermodynamique, 4+ pgs). Paris: Gautier-Villars.
External links
● Guillaume, Guillaume, and Einstein – MathPages.com.
