Emanuel Derman obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Columbia University in 1973. Between 1973 and 1980 he held academic positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford University in England, the Rockefeller University in New York City and the University of Colorado at Boulder, doing research in theoretical particle physics. From 1980 to 1985 he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he designed and built high-level computer languages for financial modeling.After moving to Goldman, Sachs & Co. in late 1985, Dr Derman worked in fixed-income research. There, together with Fischer Black and Bill Toy, he developed the Black-Derman-Toy interest rate model, and later led the team that created the fixed-income object-oriented Gs-One financial modeling framework. He spent 1989 as head of the adjustable rate mortgage research group at Salomon Bros., and then returned to Goldman Sachs´ Equities division in 1990. From 1990 - 2000 he was head of the Quantitative Strategies group, where he and his colleagues pioneered the modeling of the volatility smile and built the firm´s equity derivatives trading systems and models. During this time, he and Iraj Kani invented the local-volatility model of the smile, and the group as a whole wrote numerous articles on exotic options and aspects of volatility trading. He became a Managing Director of Goldman, Sachs & Co. in 1997. In 2000 Dr Derman moved to become head of the Derivatives Analysis group in the Firmwide Risk Department at Goldman, Sachs & Co, where he concentrated on nvestigating issues of model risk. In 2002 he retired from Goldman, Sachs to write a book about quantitative life and to concentrate on research.

Dr. Derman is an associate editor of The Journal of Derivatives, the Journal of Risk and is on the advisory board of the Journal of Risk Finance, and is a columnist for Risk magazine. He has received three Financial Analysts Journal Graham & Dodd Scrolls for Excellence in Financial Writing. He was named IAFE/Sungard Financial Engineer of the Year 2000.