Fischer Black

American economist

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June 22, 2026

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Fischer Black was an American economist best known for his work with Myron Scholes on the Black-Scholes option valuation formula. This formula made options trading more accessible by providing investors with a benchmark for valuing them.1

The Black-Scholes model, developed in 1973, calculates the theoretical value of an option contract using several input variables, including the underlying asset's price, strike price, time to expiration, interest rates, dividend yield, and volatility. While Black died in 1995 and was ineligible for the Nobel Prize, Scholes shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Merton for their work on this formula.21

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Myron S. Scholes
…for his work with colleague Fischer Black on the Black-Scholes option valuation formula, which made options trading more accessible by giving investors a benchmark for valuing. Scholes shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert C. Merton, who generalized the Black-Scholes formula to make it apply to other
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…for his work with colleague Fischer Black on the Black-Scholes option valuation formula, which made options trading more accessible by giving investors a benchmark for valuing. Scholes shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert C. Merton, who generalized the Black-Scholes formula to make it apply to other
Read More