Short answers, pulled from the story.
Finance is the study of resources that lets an entity gain consumption and saving opportunity within a specified timeframe, involving concepts like income, money, currency, assets, and liabilities. As a subject of study it is a field of business administration. Based on the scope of financial activities, it divides into personal, corporate, and public finance.
The three main areas of finance are personal finance, corporate finance, and public finance. Personal finance covers budgeting for individuals across income, spending, saving, investing, and protection. Corporate finance addresses increasing a firm's value for shareholders, and public finance manages the money of sovereign states and public bodies.
Finance emerged as a distinct academic discipline, separate from economics, in the middle of the 20th century. The earliest doctoral programs in finance were established in the 1960s and 1970s. Today it is also widely studied through career-focused undergraduate and master's level programs.
The earliest historical evidence of finance is dated to around 3000 BCE, with origins in state formation and trade during the Bronze Age. Banking originated in West Asia, where temples and palaces stored valuables, beginning with grain and later including cattle and precious materials. The Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia supported trade through lending and interest.
Quantitative finance, also called mathematical finance, includes finance activities where a sophisticated mathematical model is required. It comprises three sub-disciplines: financial engineering for derivatives, financial risk management in banking, and building investment strategies for quantitative funds. Quants also work in automated, high-frequency, algorithmic, and program trading.
The first stock exchange was opened in Antwerp in 1531. Later exchanges followed, including the London Stock Exchange, founded in 1773, and the New York Stock Exchange, founded in 1793.
In ancient Sumerian the word for interest was mas, which translates to calf. In Greece and Egypt the words tokos and ms meant to give birth. These cultures saw interest as a valuable increase viewed from the lender's point of view.