Major finance theorists came from operations research and were pushed by computing constraints.

Evidence

The theoretical work discussed in this book was conducted primarily with pen or pencil and paper, with the computer in the background. The computer’s presence is nevertheless important, as would be expected by readers of Philip Mirowski’s (2002) account of the encounter between modern economics and the “cyborg sciences.” Two major contributors to finance theory, Harry Markowitz and Jack Treynor, worked in operations research (a field whose interweaving with computing and whose influence on economics have been investigated by Mirowski), and the exigencies of computerization were important to William Sharpe’s development of Markowitz’s model. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to Mirowski’s cyborg-science account of economics; the reader already draws on Mirowski for the performativity literature.