The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run.

FORBES: Black-Scholes Didn't Cause the Financial Crash

Fischer Black, co-originator of the options-pricing model for which Messrs Merton and Scholes were recognised, died a year too soon to join his collaborators on the podium.

ECONOMIST: Nobel prize in economics

At Goldman he rose to the level of Managing Director and co-invented the tool for pricing options on Treasury bonds with Goldman colleagues Bill Toy and the late Fischer Black, of Black-Scholes formula fame.

FORBES: A Review of Emanuel Derman's New Book: Models.Behaving.Badly.

The Chicago native earned a finance doctorate at the University of Chicago in the early 1970s, when he worked with advisors like Nobel Prize winner Merton Miller and Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, coauthors of the Black-Scholes options pricing model.

FORBES: Money & Investing