Jerome Friedman was born in Chicago in 1930. In his youth he was inclined towards the arts, especially painting, but after he read Albert Einstein’s book “Relativity”, he began to take an interest in physics, studied at the University of Chicago, and in 1956 received his Ph.D. from 1960 he served as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his research focusing on particle physics.

Jerome Friedman and his research partners, Henry Kendal and Richard Taylor, were awarded the 1990 Nobel prize in Physics “For their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.”

Following the research of Ernest Rutherford, who first discovered the atom nucleus at the beginning of the 20th Century, great scientific effort was made to identify the building blocks of matter. Protons, electrons and neutrons were discovered, and later on more elementary particles.

The theoreticians Gell-mann and Zweig postulated a model in which each hadron, such as the proton and the neutron, is composed of triplets of particles called quarks. Friedman and his colleagues verified that model by observations they made on the internal structure of those particles, which make up the atom’s nucleus.

Harry Markowitz was born in 1927 in Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago and has subsequently combined successful academic and business careers.

In 1990, Harry Markowitz was awarded the Nobel prize in economic sciences, for the development of the portfolio selection theory.

Markowitz’s studies have influenced the entire world of finance and made him a key figure in contemporary investment research.

According to Markowitz, investors should not only select portfolios that maximize expected profit, but should consider the variance of the return in order to protect their investments in a risky and uncertain market.

A genius is someone who is able to – a simple explanation to a complicated issue. How then would you call someone who managed to simplify an economic theory and at the same time make us want to order pizza?

A genius is someone who is able to – a simple explanation to a complicated issue. How then would you call someone who managed to simplify an economic theory and at the same time make us want to order pizza?

Miller claimed that the value of a firm is unaffected by how that firm is financed, much like the size of a pizza is unaffected by the number of slices we divide it to.

He was born in 1923 in Boston to an educated Jewish family and graduated from Harvard university. He taught in Chicago university for over 40 years.

In 1990 he was awarded a Nobel Prize in economy.  He died seven years later, leaving hundreds of followers who maintained his heritage: logic, truth – and surprising metaphors about delicious pastries.