Risk measures in quantitative finance

The current ongoing global credit crunch has highlighted the importance of risk measurement in finance to companies and regulators alike. Despite risk measurement?s central importance to risk management, few papers exist reviewing them or following their evolution from its foremost beginnings up to the current day risk measures. This paper reviews the most important portfolio risk measures in financial mathematics, from Bernoulli to Markowitz?s portfolio theory, to the currently preferred risk measures such as conditional value at risk. We provide a chronological review of the risk measures and survey less commonly known risk measures (e.g. Treynor ratio).