An American economist widely credited as the father of Modern Portfolio Theory. In a 1952 paper called “Portfolio Selection” (which later became part of his doctoral dissertation) Markowitz demonstrated that diversification across asset classes with low correlations can reduce investment risk without reducing return – a concept Markowitz called the “efficient frontier.” While defending his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago in 1955, his faculty advisor, the renowned economist Milton Friedman, declared the paper “was not economics.” Yet, Markowitz received the John von Neumann Theory Prize for this research in 1989 and the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1990. Today, MPT is the basis for virtually all of professional asset management worldwide.