MIT Econ Prof Wins Nobel Prize (with video) by Matt McGann '00

As Chris blogged last week, MIT Economics professor Peter Diamond PhD ’63 was awarded the Nobel memorial prize in Economics. For MIT, this makes 3 current or emeritus faculty (Diamond, Robert Merton PhD ’70, and Robert Solow) and 9 alumni (including Diamond and Merton) who have won the Nobel Prize in Economics (more have won for Medicine, Physics, and Chemistry).

MIT held a press conference to announce Prof. Diamond’s win. Here are the highlights:

You can watch the full press conference at MIT TechTV.

One of the things I like about the press conference is that it didn’t happen in a fancy board room or anything — they held it in a normal MIT classroom (it looks a lot like the room where I took 18.330 Introduction to Numerical Analysis with Prof. Toomre… do any MIT students reading this know which classroom this is?). I love that the chalkboard isn’t even fully erased!

One of the nice and amazing things about Diamond winning the Nobel Prize is that his thesis advisor when he was an MIT student was another Nobel Prize winner, Robert Solow; Prof. Solow was in the room for the press conference and posed for pictures with Diamond.

I also like that Prof. Diamond only heard about the prize after coming back from a red-eye flight from New Zealand via San Francisco; the prize was announced while he was still on his flight (I believe). His wife and son picked him up at Boston Logan Airport, and he didn’t learn about the prize until a phone call he received while they were driving on Storrow Drive (appropriately, looking across the Charles River at MIT).

One reporter asked Prof. Diamond, a big Red Sox fan, how winning the Nobel compared to the Red Sox’s historic World Series win in 2004. In responding, he made reference to the thrill of throwing out the first pitch at Fenway Park. Check out the photos:

Congratulations Professor Diamond!