the quants: how a new breed of math whizzes conquered wall street and nearly destroyed it  <p>in march 2006, the world's richest men sipped champagne in an opulent new york hotel. they were preparing to compete in a poker tournament with â­million-dollar stakes. at the card table that night was peter muller, who managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called pdt. with him was ken griffin, who was the tough-as-nails head of citadel investment group. there, too, were cliff asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund aqr capital management, and boaz weinstein, chess "life master" and king of the credit-default swap. </p> <p>muller, griffin, asness, and weinstein were among the best and brightest of a new breed, the quants. over the past 20 years, this species of math whiz had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk takers who'd long been the alpha males of the world's largest casino. the quants believed that a cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets. and they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift â­billions around the globe with the click of a mouse. few realized that night, though, that in creating this extraordinary system, men like muller, griffin, asness, and weinstein had sown the seeds for history's greatest financial disaster.</p>