Career change: from physicist to banker

Wall Street Journal : Hamid Biglari went from physics to finance. Now, he’s helping lead efforts to revive Citigroup Inc. Born and raised in Tehran, Hamid Biglari came to the US in 1977 to study mathematics and physics at Cornell University.Biglari planned to return to Tehran after getting his degree, but the 1979 Iranian Revolution derailed his plans. He realized that his career opportunities would be better in the US so filed for permanent residency.After earning his PhD in astrophysics at Princeton in 1987 he became a theoretical physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory , writing one of the most cited papers in Tokamak fusion research .But research budget cuts made Biglari consider a career in finance.He had no business experience, but he cold-called management consultancy McKinsey & Co., and successfully persuaded them to hire him, based on his analytical and computational skills.After moving to Citigroup in 2000 , earlier this year Biglari became vice chairman in charge of strategy and resource allocation, a key post in reframing the company after last year’s billion-dollar loss.