Financial History Issue 133 (Spring 2020) | Page 28

of Risk and Insurance and several other prestigious journals. Interestingly, the majority of his articles were published in the Financial Analysts Journal of the CFA Institute, which had been founded by Benjamin Graham in 1937, then called the New York Society of Security Analysts. Academic Honors Roger Murray speaks with attendees at his 1993 lecture series. commercial computer; FLOW-MATIC, the first language-based programming language; and COBOL, the most exten- sively used computer language in the world. She was a long-serving officer in the US Navy, who rose to the position of Rear Admiral. The Navy destroyer, USS Hopper, was named in her honor in 1997. She was the recipient of more than 40 honorary degrees. After her death, she posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her “lifelong leader- ship role in the field of computer science.” Roger attended Phillips Andover Acad- emy and Yale, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1932. After graduation, he joined the Bankers Trust Company as one of only three new associates hired in 1932, at the depth of the Great Depression. He attended New York University at night to earn his MBA and Ph.D. degrees. His dissertation, entitled “Preferred Stocks of Industrial Companies,” was published in 1942. In 1934, he married Agnes McDede (1908–2001). They lived at 230 Riverside Drive, at the corner of W. 95th Street, where he lived as a child. In 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Force and served as a captain during the war until his discharge in December 1945. He rejoined Bankers Trust as an invest- ment manager, chief economist and vice president until his retirement from bank- ing in 1955. Academic Career (1956–1978) In 1956, Benjamin Graham retired from teaching security analysis at Columbia University and moved to Beverly Hills. Dean Courtney Brown was looking for administrative assistance and for a suc- cessor to follow Graham. He approached Roger Murray, whom he had known for years, to join the faculty as associate dean and to coordinate with Benjamin Graham and David Dodd to continue their teach- ings. In 1958, Murray was appointed as the first S. Sloan Colt Professor of Banking, a chair he held until 1965. In addition to Graham and Dodd’s security analysis, he taught courses on capital markets and portfolio management. From 1965 to 1970, Murray continued to teach as an adjunct professor while working full time on his passion of pro- moting equity investment to the pension fund community at the College Retire- ment Equity Fund. In 1970, Murray rejoined Columbia Business School full time as the S. Sloan Colt Professor of Banking and Finance. He continued to teach and publish aca- demic research until his retirement in 1978. From 1952 to 1984, he published many articles on pensions, capital markets and macro issues in the Journal of Finance, the Financial Analysts Journal, the Journal 26    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Spring 2020  | www.MoAF.org In 1964, Murray was elected president of the American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics. It is also the publisher of the Journal of Finance. In 1974, he was appointed to the New York State Council of Economic Advi- sors by then-governor Nelson Rockefeller. In 1993, Murray received the CFA Insti- tute’s prestigious Nicholas Molodovsky Award for his outstanding contribution to investment research. Benjamin Graham received this award in 1975. College Retirement Equity Fund (1965–1970) Professor Murray joined the College Retirement Equity Fund (CREF), an affil- iate of the Teachers Insurance Annu- ity Association (TIAA), in 1965 as vice president and economist to develop its investment operation. In 1967, he was elected chairman of the CREF Finance Committee. At that time, pension funds invested primarily in bonds. Stocks were regarded as a high-risk, volatile asset class and, therefore, not appropriate for conserva- tive pension funds. CREF challenged that view, citing long-term superior returns of equities over bonds even though the short-term volatility was higher. The long- term investment horizon of pension funds made short-term volatility irrelevant. In fact, at times highly volatile securities can be viewed as an opportunity, not a risk, which is a core tenet of Benjamin Gra- ham’s teachings. Roger Murray’s achievements at CREF are recounted in It’s My Retirement Money—Take Good Care of It: The TIAA- CREF Story, by William C. Greenough, president of TIAA-CREF from 1957 until his retirement in 1979. The following is a summary of Greenough’s recollections of Murray’s contribution to the development of CREF.