Life, Legacy, and the Nobel Prize

Abstract

Harry Markowitz’s career path proved unconventional, even for great minds in finance and for Nobel Prize winners. His Nobel Prize-winning work shared commonality with Kenneth Arrow and the brilliant game theorist John Nash in that it was completed before he finished his PhD. To his credit, he almost always maintained at least one foot in the world of financial practice. Following his stay at the RAND Corporation, he worked for many years on software development, first with Consolidated Analysis Centers from 1963 to 1968, then with the Arbitrage Management Company from 1969 to 1972, and finally with the T.J. Watson Research Center of IBM (International Business Machines) from 1974 to 1983.