Antoine-Augustin Cournot was born on 28 August 1801 in Gray, in the province of Franche-Comte, and died in Paris on 31 March 1877.

He was admitted to the Ecole Normale at the age of 20, but the school was closed in 1822 for political reasons. He then studied at the Faculty of Sciences and defended in 1829 his main thesis in mechanics and a secondary thesis in astronomy.

The mathematical papers he published attracted the attention of Simeon-Denis Poisson and, thanks to him, in 1834 he became professor of mechanics and analysis at the Faculty of Sciences in Lyon. In October 1835, he became “Recteur” of the Academie de Grenoble and taught mathematics at the Faculty. In 1836 he replaced Andre-Marie Ampere as general inspector of education. While working for these three positions, he wrote his Recherches sur lesprincipes mathematiques de la theorie des richesses, published in 1838. He came back to mathematics and published, in 1841, the Traite elementaire de la theorie des fonctions et du calcul infinitesimal and, in 1843, his book on probability theory, Exposition de la theorie des chances et des probabilites. He then directed his attention to the philoso­phy of sciences with his Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances (1851) and Traite de l’enchalnement des idees fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire (1861). From 1854 to 1862, he was “Recteur” of the Academie de Dijon but, in 1862, because of his blindness, he left this position. He continued to do research until his death. He returned to economics in Principes de la theorie des richesses (1863) which put in literary form the ideas he advanced in 1838. This book, however, shows a change in his views and the influence of John Stuart Mill and Friedrich List: Cournot’s dissatisfaction with liberalism became more evident. The idea that “the greatest good for society must necessarily be the resultant of the forces generated by private interests” (Cournot 1863 [1981]: 275) seems ill founded; on the one hand, the notion of an optimum is not clearly defined and, on the other hand, it is impossible to prove that particular interests necessarily lead to a collective well-being.