Conclusions

The 1960s saw the emergence of finance as a discipline of its own, out of the shadow of economics. It managed this transition by producing models that were both rigorous and practical, and arrived at just the right time to provide the tools for new and burgeoning financial markets. It also heralded in an era of quantifiable methodologies, always with an eye toward practical application. The backrooms of investment banks would soon be staffed not by seasoned cigar-smoking professionals who knew finance as an art form, but rather by young physicists, mathematicians, and prodigies who grasped the significance of complicated differential equations and could translate their cascade of Greek letters into financial profits.