Often technology develops in a cascade. An initial success provides a basis for further improvements and new developments, and those improvements and developments are in their turn built on. Soon, the technology has outstripped potential rivals and seems to have a momentum of its own. … The emergence of finance theory also has something of the character of a cascade. Markowitz provided Sharpe with his basic model; Modigliani and Miller inspired Treynor; Sharpe and Treynor gave Black and Scholes their crucial intellectual resource; Merton rebuilt Black and Scholes's model on new foundations; Cox, Ross, Rubinstein, Harrison, and Kreps built on Black, Scholes, and Merton; Wall Street's "quants" translated what the academics had done into forms more suited to the exigencies of practice; and so onward into trading rooms.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 1090