In March 2006, the world’s richest men sipped champagne within an opulent New York hotel. These were preparing to compete inside a texas holdem tournament with ­million-dollar stakes. On the credit card table that night was Peter Muller, who handled a fabulously effective hedge account known as PDT. With him was Ken Griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Expenditure Group. There, as well, were Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial creator of the hedge account AQR Capital Administration, and Boaz Weinstein, chess “ about The Quants: What sort of New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall structure Street and Almost Destroyed It life get good at” and king from the credit-default swap.

Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a fresh breed, the quants. Over the past two decades, this species of math whiz got usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who’d always been the alpha men of the world’s largest internet casino. The quants thought that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry kept the main element to reaping riches from the financial markets. And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could change ­billions around the globe using the click of the mouse. Few realized that night time, though, that in creating this outstanding system, guys like Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein had sown the seeds for history’s best financial disaster.