Gabriel Cramer

Gabriel Cramer was a Genevan mathematician, born on 31 July 1704 and died on 4 January 1752. He received his doctorate from the Academy of Geneva in 1722 at the age of eighteen, was made co-chair of mathematics there at twenty and became its sole professor of mathematics in 1734. He also sat on the Council of Two Hundred and later the Council of Sixty of the Republic of Geneva. His best-known work, a treatise on algebraic curves published in 1750, contains the rule for solving linear systems by determinants that carries his name. In 1728 he proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox that came close to expected utility theory.