Robert C. Merton

Robert C. Merton married a television actress and model, June Rose in 1966 and separated from her in 1996.

He has three children from the marriage - a daughter, Samantha J. and two sons named Robert F. and Paul J.

Robert C. Merton was born in New York, New York State, USA on July 31, 1944. His father was Robert K. Merton, a professor of sociology at the ‘Columbia University’ and his mother was Suzanne Carhart from a Methodist Quaker family from New Jersey.

He had an older sister, Stephanie and a younger sister, Vanessa.

He did his schooling from a local public school in Hastings-on Hudson where he graduated with ninety other students.

He wanted to become an automobile engineer when he grew up and even worked for Ford in Dearborn Michigan during two summers of his college days.

He studied Engineering Mathematics at the ‘Columbia University’ and won a ‘Faculty Scholarship Award’ in 1964. He obtained his B.S. degree in 1966.

Robert C. Merton did his first consulting job in 1969 for a bank in Southern California.

From 1969 to 1970 he worked as an Instructor at the ‘Department of Economics’ at MIT.

From 1970 to 1973 he taught finance at the ‘A. P. Sloan School of Management’ at MIT as an Assistant Professor of Finance, as an Associate Professor from 1973 to 1974 and as a Professor from 1974 to 1980. He was a ‘J. C. Penny Professor of Management’ from 1980 to 1988 at MIT.

In 1972 Merton and Myron Scholes were appointed by Mathew Gladstein to work for ‘Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette’ for developing a model for option pricing and hedge money which they duplicated later for the ‘Chicago Board Options Exchange’.

He served as a Research Associate at the ‘National Bureau of Economic Research’ in 1979.

Robert C. Merton has written many treatises on economics. His book ‘Continuous-Time Finance’ was published in 1990.

He also co-authored the books ‘Cases in Financial Engineering: Applied Studies of Financial Innovation’ and ‘The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective’ both published in 1995 and ‘Finance and Financial Economies’ published in 1998.