As an academic, William Sharpe was one of the most brilliant and prolific financial researchers.

FORBES: Financial Engines Is A Sharpe IPO

This is the conclusion of Nobel Laureate William Sharpe in his latest Financial Analysts Journal article The Arithmetic of Investment Expenses.

FORBES: A Sharpe Assault on Mutual Fund Fees

The model quickly became a cornerstone of investing theory, and it helped earn William Sharpe and Harry Markowitz the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1990.

WSJ: Supercharging Your Investment Portfolio

And William Sharpe, a Nobel prize-winning economist at Stanford University in California, asserts that most of the financial-advice software now being touted to ordinary investors fails miserably to deal with risk.

ECONOMIST: Money managers

"We've had a lot of bets, " says Graham Sharpe of bookmakers William Hill.

BBC: The bookies' choice

Graham Sharpe, a spokesman for William Hill, one of the bigger bookmakers, says that might be tricky.

ECONOMIST: A new newspaper plans to tap into Britain's betting boom