Definition:Brownian Motion/Historical Note

Brownian Motion: Historical Note

Brownian motion was first noticed by Robert Brown in $1827$.

He observed under a microscope that pollen grains moved erratically and seemingly randomly in a sort of zigzag path.

He confirmed that it was not a phenomenon of life, as he repeated the experiment with inorganic dust.

The term Brownian motion is now also used for the stochastic model that is used to describe such random movements.

Sources

• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Brownian motion