Robert Litzenberger is Professor Emeritus of Finance in the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, within the Business & Economics faculty. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Litzenberger began his academic career at Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration for one year, then joined the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he earned tenure and became the C.O.G. Miller Distinguished Professor of Finance. In 1986, he moved to the Wharton School as the Edward Hopkinson Professor of Investment Banking. During his tenure at Wharton, he served part-time as Director of Research and Chief Economist at AIG Financial Products, and upon returning full-time, he developed the first financial engineering course at the university. He retired from active teaching in 1995, becoming Professor Emeritus.

Litzenberger has significantly influenced financial economics through his research specializations in asset pricing and risk management. He co-authored a doctoral-level textbook on financial economics and published more than 50 articles in leading academic finance journals, many co-authored with former students. A key publication is 'Prices of State-Contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices' (1978, with Douglas T. Breeden), which established the use of state prices in financial economics. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. As a Fellow of the American Finance Association, he was President of the AFA and the Western Finance Association. In industry, Litzenberger joined Goldman Sachs in 1995 as Director of Derivative Research and Quantitative Modeling, became Firm-wide Risk Manager in 1998, and Partner in 1999. He was named Risk Manager of the Year by Risk Magazine in 2001 and inducted into their Risk Hall of Fame in 2003. He received the IAQF/SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year award in 2012. From 2002 to 2007, he was Executive Director at Azimuth Trust, developing a risk and allocation system accounting for fat tails in financial crises. Currently, he consults and serves on the board of RGM Advisors.

Professional Email: litz@wharton.upenn.edu