Short Bio
Born in Vienna (Austria)
Grew up in Switzerland
Live & work (together with my wife Fortunée, a stone sculptor) in New York City, Jerusalem (Israel) and Villeneuve (Switzerland).
Education
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1968 - 1972 Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland, MSc mathematics
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1973 - 1975 Stanford University, MBA
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1975 - 1984 Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, Ph.D. mathematical economics
Work experience
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Management consultant, McKinsey & Co, Zurich, Munich, London
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Assistant Professor of Finance and Decision Sciences, U. of Pennsylvania, Wharton
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Assistant Professor of Finance, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
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Visiting Professor of Economics, University of Zürich
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Correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland
Books
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Kepler’s Conjecture: How Some of the Greatest Minds in History Helped Solve one of the Oldest Math Problems of the World; John Wiley, 2003.
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The Secret Life of Numbers: 50 Easy Pieces on How Mathematicians Work and Think; Joseph Henry Press (The National Academy of Sciences), 2006.
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Poincaré’s Conjecture: The Hundred-Year Quest to Solve One of Math's Greatest Puzzles; Dutton, 2007.
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A Mathematical Medley: Fifty easy Pieces on Mathematics; The American Mathematical Association (AMA), 2010
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Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present; Princeton University Press, 2010.
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Pricing the Future: Finance, Physics, and the 300-year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation; Basic Books 2011
Prizes & Fellowships
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October 2003, “Prix Media 2003” by the Swiss Academy of Sciences. (Also here, page 29.)
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December 2005, runner-up for the “Descartes Prize for Science Communication,” awarded by the European Community.
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November 2006, Media Prize of the German Association of Mathematicians (DMV).
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October 2007, fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation.
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April 2016, fellowship by the Bogliasco Foundation.