David LeFevre Dodd (August 23, 1895 – September 18, 1988) was an American educator, financial analyst, author, economist, and investor.

The Wall Street crash of 1929 (Black Tuesday) almost wiped out Graham, who had started teaching the year before at his alma mater, Columbia.

On May 17, 1984, on the 50th anniversary of publishing Security Analysis, Michael I. Sovern, president of Columbia University, awarded Dodd a Doctor of Letters, an honorary degree, for applying financial theories with brilliant results in a highly competitive world of investments.

Dodd was a member of the following organizations: American Economic Association, Social Science Research Council (investment committee 1950–1956), American Finance Association (vice president 1946–1947), New York Society of Security Analysts, Beta Gamma Sigma, Phi Gamma Delta, Alpha Kappa Psi, and Phi Chi Theta.

Despite the onset of modern portfolio theory (MPT) in the late 1950s—a theory that peaked throughout the 80s, gaining Nobel recognition in 1990 (co-laureates: Harry Markowitz, Merton Miller, William F. Sharpe)—Value Investing proved to be a formidable style that sharply defied MPT.

Value investor purists reject the usefulness of capital asset pricing model (CAPM), in part, because it wrongly extrapolates historical volatility as a proxy for risk.

Warren Buffett once commented, "You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat.

"[3] Shortly after the death of David Dodd in 1988, Bruce Greenwald, a star professor at CBS, took a keen interest in Value Investing.

Professor Greenwald invigorated the academic aspects of what many in ivory towers erstwhile treated as a vocational discipline.

MPT pundits argue that the Warren Buffett's long-term record is a statistical three- to five-sigma event—that is, his success is probable, but not replicable with certainty.