Robert C. Merton PhD ’70
School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance
Nobel laureate in Economics, 1997
Robert C. Merton, distinguished professor of finance at the Sloan School of Management, has spent his career applying high-powered mathematics to the real world. His research focuses on finance theory including lifecycle finance, pricing of options, loan guarantees, and other complex derivative securities. Professor Merton has co-written or co-edited 10 books, is the author of more than 90 articles, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He graduated from Columbia University with a degree in engineering mathematics in 1966, later earned a Master's degree in applied mathematics from the California Institute of Technology, and completed a PhD in economics from MIT in 1970. His new method to determine the value of derivatives led to the Nobel Prize in economics in 1997.