PhD in Physics and Chemistry

[Princeton Man]

Out of curiosity, why are physicists in such demand in the financial engineering industry ? Also, why do employers like doctoral students in chemistry who have concentrated on physical chem ? My friend recently finished her Phd in Chemistry with a concentration in physical chem and her main area of focus was statistical mechanics.

 

[Li Cai]

"The jack-of-all-trades in that era was unlikely to be an MBA or a PhD in Finance even if they knew enough quantitative finance, most
of them looked down with disdain on programming and mathematics as cheap, geeky skills they could pay other people to do for them.
Mathematicians, too, tended to avoid programming, preferring analysis to computation. Computer scientists, though they knew discrete mathematics and Boolean algebra, were often uncomfortable with continuous-time mathematics. PhDs in physics or engineering fit the jack-of-all-trades bill pretty well. First, the mathematics of finance closely resembles the mathematics of physics. Furthermore, physicists don't grow up wearing white gloves; they have no scruples about tackling tasks beneath their so-called dignity.They do their own math and programming; the willingness to do so is an essential part of graduate student and postdoc subculture."
from My Life as a Quant