Helped ensure the financial success and operational transparency of America's most dynamic industry in the 1800s - railroads - by providing reliable, comprehensive data for investors. Led to the founding of one of the most prominent names in the field of financial information services: Standard & Poor's.

In 1959 O'Brien forms the Technical Service Division, delivering printed data on microfilm. Two years later, a division is created now known as Information Handling Services.

After learning in her 20s about the path-breaking work of CRISIL, she showed up unannounced at the CEO’s office and asked for a job. She became the first woman to lead CRISIL and spearheaded the growth of its global footprint.

Gave investors a better overall view of the market with broad-market, market-cap-weighted and composite indices, and laid the groundwork for the first computer-generated index: the S&P 500. This industry-standard index is still used today to drive critical financial decisions.

A journalist turned business advocate who shed light on the monopolies in the oil industry and helped champion greater industrywide competition and sustainability. His oil price assessment became the global benchmark in 1928, and Platts has grown into the leading independent provider of information for the energy and commodities markets.

Given free rein to "come up with something worthwhile" at Standard & Poor's in the early 1960s, he embraced the power of the computer as an investment tool. Morrison created Compustat, deploying machine readable tape to provide deeper financial insight than ever before.

Frustrated by the inefficient dissemination of savings & loan market information to investors and analysts, he left his bank job to start a quarterly digest of S&L information for investment banks. He launched SNL Financial in 1987, which served as a basis for S&P Global Market Intelligence after its acquisition in 2015.