History

‘I can calculate the motions of the planets, but I cannot calculate the madness of men’ – Sir Isaac Newton 1720.

In 1720 pioneering physicist Sir Isaac Newton, lost vast sums of money in the ‘South Sea stock bubble’ market crash, leading him to exclaim this powerful statement as to the difficulty of making financial market predictions.

Natural philosophers and scientists have long had an interest finance in but with little practical success. However, just as the twentieth century saw a move from Newtonian mechanics to quantum mechanics, it also saw the vast expansion of physicist’s role in understanding financial systems and markets. This graphic provides a brief overview into this.