Beautiful minds
University of Chicago professor Roger B. Myerson joins the likes of Bellow, Fermi and Friedman as Nobel Prize winners from the revered institution
Roger B. Myerson spent the night before winning the Nobel Prize for economics jamming with some friends from the Old Town School of Folk Music.
An amateur harmonica player, Myerson joked Monday that capturing the Nobel "might help us get a gig."
(John H. White/Sun-Times)
He could just put on the show himself: The award carries a $1.56 million prize, which Myerson, a University of Chicago professor, will share with two others.
While it is fashionable for self-effacing recipients to shrug off the glory, Myerson acknowledged he has thought about the prize for years.
Besides scholarly curiosity, "I think most of us are motivated by material rewards and vanity, as well. I'm happy to subscribe to all human motivations," Myerson said as his colleagues laughed at a press conference at the U. of C.
Members of the Nobel Prize jury "do their jobs very well" and, Myerson added, "this year I'm particularly in favor of the way they did it."
The 56-year-old Wilmette resident and married father of two said he began thinking about the prize in 1994, when the Nobel for economics was awarded to John Nash, the subject of the Academy Award-winning film "A Beautiful Mind."
Nash's "game theory" looks at how people make decisions when another person could affect the outcome.
Myerson, University of Minnesota professor emeritus Leonid Hurwicz and Eric S. Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., were recognized this year for studying how game theory can help determine the most efficient method for allocating resources.
"It occurred to me, after the game theory prize, 'You know, if you were to win a Nobel Prize . . ." said Myerson.
Not that the Nobel will change him, he said.
"When I talk about things, [colleagues] listen to me and criticize me when they think I'm wrong. That isn't going to change," he said.
But James Heckman, a fellow U. of C. economist who won in 2000, said the prize does cause some winners to "lose their sense."
"I don't think we'll have any trouble with Roger, but in the past, the prize has gone to people's heads. It's like suddenly climbing Mt. Everest without an oxygen tank," said Heckman.
"People get a little carried away at times, feeling they know everything."
Working at the U. of C., which now counts 80 Nobel laureates with Chicago ties -- including six others who are currently members of the faculty -- will help.
"Here, nobody says, 'This guy's a Nobel prize laureate. I'm not going to question him,'" said Heckman.
At the U. of C., "nobody rises too far out of the mud."
"For the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."
"For his demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation."
"For his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy."
"For having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory."
