The Early Years

Abstract

While the Black-Scholes formula for options pricing remains the contribution most associated with that pair of great minds, the results were motivated behind the scenes by another most intellectually generous collaborator. And while Fischer Black came from a long lineage that dated right back to the first European settlers in the USA, and Myron Scholes was the grandson of an entrepreneurial set of immigrants from Polish Russia, Robert Carhart Merton embodied both such lineages.