Black-Scholes was prescient went it first hit the scene in the late 60s/early 70s. Ed Thorp (who independently derived the formula before B-S published it) made

Black-Scholes was prescient went it first hit the scene in the late 60s/early 70s. Ed Thorp (who independently derived the formula before B-S published it) made tens of millions of dollars applying it through his statistical arbitrage hedge fund. It was the most accurate predictor at the time. It's also remarkable that four people independently derived the formula: "In coming up with a trading strategy for warrants, Ed discovered a handy formula. A few years later, three finance professors independently came up with their own slight mathematical variant of the same formula. Ed Thorp, Myron Scholes, Robert Merton, and Fischer Black all had almost the same formula, but each had a different reason for believing it was true. Ed showed that it was a way to make money..." Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (Wiley 2006)