David Booth Chairman and CEO, Dimensional Fund Advisors

David Booth, who for years has shied away from the spotlight, saw his profile rise last year when he donated $300 million of Dimensional Fund Advisors' stock to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, now renamed Booth School of Business.

"The very first course I took at the University of Chicago was taught by Eugene Fama and it was a life-changing event for me," said Booth, a 1972 MBA graduate, when the donation -- the largest in the university's history and the largest ever to a business school -- was announced last November.

Booth was a research assistant to Fama, founder of the efficient market hypothesis, which posits that investors in stocks should not be able to trump the market because there isn't a way for them to know something about a stock that isn't already factored into its stock price.

Booth went on to create the first institutional index funds at Wells Fargo with John McQuown in the early '70s. In 1981, Booth teamed with fellow University of Chicago MBA graduate Rex Sinquefield, now retired, to form Dimensional. That year, the firm unveiled the industry's first passively managed small cap fund. Santa Monica, California-based Dimensional, which continues to keep close ties to the academic community, had $127 billion under management as of end-June. 

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