Hélyette Geman

Hélyette Geman is a French academic in mathematical finance. In 2022 she became the first woman in 41 years to be named ‘Financial Engineer of the Year’ by the International Association of Financial Engineers. Her career has spanned several sub-disciplines including catastrophic insurance, probability theory, and the finance of commodities. Her academic institutions include ESSEC Business School, the University Paris Dauphine (Master 203), and Birkbeck, University of London. She is currently a Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Hélyette Geman
Nationality	French
Citizenship	French, American
Alma mater	École Normale Supérieure Pierre and Marie Curie University Pantheon-Sorbonne University
Scientific career
Fields	Probability Theory, Mathematical Finance, Commodities, Climate Sciences.
Institutions	Johns Hopkins University; previous: Birbeck, University of London; Paris Dauphine; ESSEC.
Thesis	"Contribution à l’Etude des Convergences Stochastiques des Mesures Aléatoires" (1976) L'Importance de la Probabilité Forward Neutre dans une Approche Stochastique des Taux d'Intérêt (1990)
Doctoral students	Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Website	helyettegeman.com

Notable Research and Activities

Helyette Geman is most known for:

• Having been the first to formally introduce the forward measure for the valuation of interest rate derivatives.
• Having coined the term numéraire in the context of option pricing and commodities portfolio management.
• Having exhibited a stochastic clock driven by order flow, leading to the normality of asset returns.
• Her role in creating, with Marc Yor, the sought-after master's program, jointly operated by the French Universities École Polytechnique, Pierre and Marie Curie University, and ESSEC Business School.
• Pricing Catastrophe Futures and Options using Bessel Processes.
• Her work on probability distributions, specifically the "CGMY" Lévy process named after Carr, Helyette Geman, Madan and Yor.
• Her 2005 book on Commodities Derivatives.^[1]
• Having Organized in June 2000 the First Bachelier World Congress with Professors Paul Samuelson, Robert Merton, and Henri McKean.
• Her book 'Insurance, Weather and Electricity Derivatives: From Exotic Options to Exotic Underlyings', 1999, Risk Books.
• Her work on 'Bitcoins and Commodities'^[2]
• Being the PhD supervisor of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Selected publications

• Changes of Numeraire, Changes of Probability Measure and Option Pricing, with Nicole El Karoui, Jean-Charles Rochet. Journal of Applied Probability, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 443–458
• The Fine Structure of Asset Returns: An Empirical Investigation, with Peter Carr, Dilip B. Madan, and Marc Yor. The Journal of Business 75 (2) (April 2002): 305–332.
• Order Flow, Transaction Clock and Normality of Asset Returns, Journal of Finance, Oct 2000, Vol 55, pp. 2259-2284
• Stochastic Time Changes in Catastrophe Option Pricing Insurance, Mathematics and Economics, Dec 1997, Vol 21, pp. 185-193.

Awards

• 2022 IAQF/Northfield Financial Engineer of the Year Award
• Member of Honour - French Society of Actuaries
• Energy Risk - Hall of Fame.^[3]

References

1. Geman, Helyette (2005). Commodities and Commodity Derivatives: Modelling and Pricing for Agriculturals, Metals and Energy. Wiley Finance. ISBN 978-0470012185.
2. Price, H., Geman, H. (2019). "In the Vaults: Bitcoin Futures and Storage Insurance, The Actuary". The Actuary. 2020 (3).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
3. "The Famous Fifty". Incisive Media. 3 December 2004. Retrieved 2 January 2013.

External links

• Personal Homepage: http://www.helyettegeman.com
• Personal Homepage: http://www.ems.bbk.ac.uk/faculty/geman/
• Mathematics Genealogy Project: https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=213191