Georges-Louis LeClerc, Comte de Buffon. Buffon’s interest in probability was not restricted to parlor games. Late in life, he reminisced about his encounter with the vexing St. Petersburg paradox: “I dreamed about this problem some time without finding the knot; I could not see that it was possible to make mathematical calculations agree with common sense without introducing some moral considerations; and having expressed my ideas to Mr. Cramer, he told me that I was right, and that he had also resolved this question by a similar approach.”
