Superconducting Super Collider Cancellation Fallout

In October 1993, US Congress killed the Superconducting Super Collider after costs ballooned toward $11 billion, leaving U.S. theoretical physicists facing a collapsing academic job market. Many shifted to New York banks and helped build quantitative finance, creating models for derivatives, thereby defining a new field of financial engineering and popularizing the quant career.

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