Samuel S. Stewart Jr., the Salt Lake City-based academic who founded small-cap growth shop Wasatch Global Investors in 1975, built a $17 billion powerhouse and then left to join his family’s new venture in 2018, died on November 23 at age 79, according to a press release from his current firm, Seven Canyons Advisors. The press release announcing his death said he had recently undergone heart surgery.

Stewart, armed with a Ph.D. from Stanford and a pedigree as a Columbia University professor, was teaching at the University of Utah in his home state in 1975 when he told journalists he heard future Nobel laureate Eugene Fama speak about the efficiency of markets. Stewart told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that his skepticism led him to found his own firm at his kitchen table. He told the Journal he wanted to prove that the market can be beaten.

Wasatch had more than $32 billion in assets at the end of last year and it boasts 19 funds on its website, including the $4.27 billion Wasatch Core Growth Fund and the $3.6 billion Wasatch Small Cap Growth Fund, both of which were launched in 1986. Stewart was CEO at the firm until 2009 and continued his role as chairman until his departure.

He and his son Josh left to form Seven Canyons in April 2018, taking a couple of Wasatch funds with them. Stewart’s son Spencer also worked at Seven Canyons, which had $317 million in assets according to its last Form ADV.

Stewart wrote a column that appeared in Financial Advisor in 2015 entitled “Here Be Dragons?” in which he explained the ways investors were forced to navigate the risk-reward dangers in the era of high stock prices and low interest rates following the financial crisis.

“Consider these examples at two ends of the investment spectrum,” he wrote. “An investor could buy a U.S. tech company with a strong, consistent growth rate at an expensive price-to-earnings multiple. Or the investor could buy a Russian oil company with an attractive dividend yield and a low price-to-book value. Which would you choose? Do you prefer the predictability of the U.S. tech company with the high valuation, or the substantial dividend income from the Russian oil company that’s exposed to significant geopolitical risks?”

In 2002, Stewart and his wife Diane founded the Stewart Family Foundation, which supports the arts, education and community work in Utah and overseas.