Finance was long deemed unworthy of serious academic mathematics.

Evidence

In 1900, despite the currency of the popular “science of investing,” the financial markets were an unusual topic for an aspirant academic mathematician. “Too much on finance!” was the private comment on Bachelier’s thesis by the leading French probability theorist, Paul Levy (quoted in Courtault et al. 2000, p. 346). Bachelier’s contemporaries doubted his rigor, and his career in mathematics was modest: he was 57 before he achieved a full professorship, at Besancon rather than Paris. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 266

Categorization

• SEED: The banality of ‘too much on finance’ as a career-destroying verdict could anchor a piece on how academic prestige disciplines shaped (and delayed) mathematical finance.
• XREF: connects to: Finance was institutionally relegated to business schools and dismissed by academic economists as unscientific — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 319; Practitioners resisted finance theory partly because they felt academically ridiculed — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 355; Finance journals published almost no theoretical or mathematical work until the late 1950s — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 161 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Finance was institutionally relegated to business schools and dismissed by academic economists as unscientific #expands (0.90) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 319
• Mainstream economists once dismissed finance theory as marginal and trivial #corroborates (0.85) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 34
• Finance journals published almost no theoretical or mathematical work until the late 1950s #exemplifies (0.82) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 161
• Practitioners resisted finance theory partly because they felt academically ridiculed #corroborates (0.78) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 355