Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable

experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC

makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

In 1870, in the French port of Le Avra,

Louis Jean-Baptiste Alfons-Bachelet was born.

With a name like that, you might think the infant was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,

and indeed his father was a diplomat.

But Louis Bichelier experienced more hardships and setbacks than one might have expected,

and would go on to achieve things only fully appreciated after his death.

Nobody could have predicted the impact that he was going to have.

This is Professor Allison Etheridge, OBE.

She's Professor of Probability at the University of Oxford,

but she's also an expert on Bachelet,

having produced a new translation of his groundbreaking thesis in mathematics.

It was a thesis that not only anticipated modern financial economics but also beat Albert Einstein

to a crucial result.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Bachelet wanted to become a mathematician to study at the Sorbonne, a university in Paris.

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