Myron Samuel Scholes (born July 1, 1941) is a Canadian-born American financial economist who is best known as one of the authors of the Black–Scholes equation. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a method to determine the value of derivatives. The model provides a conceptual framework for valuing options, such as calls or puts, and is referred to as the Black–Scholes model.

Myron Scholes was born on July 1, 1941 in Timmins, Ontario, where his family had moved during the Great Depression. In 1951 the family moved to Hamilton, Ontario. Scholes was a good student^{[citation needed]}, although fighting with impaired vision starting with his teens until finally getting an operation when he was twenty-six. Through his family, he became interested in economics early, as he helped with his uncles' businesses and his parents helped him open an account for investing in the stock market while he was in high school.

After his mother died from cancer, Scholes remained in Hamilton for undergraduate studies and earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics from McMaster University in 1962. One of his professors at McMaster introduced him to the works of George Stigler and Milton Friedman, two University of Chicago economists that would later both win Nobel prizes in economics. After receiving his B.A. he decided to enroll in graduate studies in economics at the University of Chicago. Here, Scholes was a colleague with Michael Jensen and Richard Roll, and he had the opportunity to study with Eugene Fama and Merton Miller, researchers who were developing the relatively new field of financial economics. He earned his MBA at the Booth School of Business in 1964 and his Ph.D. in 1969 with a dissertation written under the supervision of Eugene Fama and Merton Miller.