Acceptance Speech on Receipt of Financial Engineer of the Year Award

Abstract

At its annual meeting on October 12, 2000, the International Association of Financial Engineers presented the Financial Engineer of the Year Award to Emanuel Derman. We are pleased to reprint here both the text of Derman's remarks in accepting the award, and also a longer presentation in which he discusses the role of a “quant” and of theoretical modeling in general on Wall Street. Like so many other things, being a “financial engineer” turns out to be a little different in practice than in theory. As a social science, financial economics must be cognizant of the social along with the science aspects of our discipline. Derman's description of the environment in which he does his work provides a thoughful, amusing, and even poetic view of the field of financial engineering.