Armen Alchian was the professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1954, he was able to figure out the secret component of a newly developed hydrogen bomb. He did this by looking at the share prices of chemical suppliers on the stock market.
He had a huge set of skills, which served we
ll when he was working for RAND in the 1950’s. During the time Armen was employed by RAND, the first test of a Hydrogen Bomb was carried out. In the build up to the test, people in the economics department were understandably very curious about the components in which made the new bomb, however, physicists and engineers couldn’t provide any information due to the sensitivity of the topic. That didn’t stop Armen wondering though, which led to him to try and ‘find out for himself’.
He looked at documents from the Department of Commerce and information about who dealt with the metals that could have been used in the Hydrogen Bomb. After cross-referencing his information, he was left with 6 companies. He watched the stock prices of these companies for 6 months and saw that during the build up to the test, Lithium Corp of America shares jumped by $10, and fell straight after the bomb test.
He wrote about his discovery in RAND and was asked to withdraw it, so he then sat on this story for decades before sharing it.