Northwestern University announced three winners of 2022 Nemmers Prizes on Wednesday.
Northwestern University announced the winners of the 2022 Nemmers Prizes in Earth sciences, economics and mathematics on Wednesday. The biennial prizes recognize top scholars in various disciplines for their outstanding achievements, contributions to knowledge and words of lasting significance.
The Nemmers Prizes are named for the family of Ervin Nemmers, a former, long-time faculty member in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. The prizes were established through contributions to Northwestern totaling $14 million by Erwin Nemmers and his brother, Frederic Nemmers.
Their donations were designated to establish four endowed professorships in the Kellogg School and five Nemmers Prizes. The Prizes in Economics and Mathematics were established in 1994; the Prize in Music Composition was created in 2004; the Prize in Medical Science in 2015; and the Prize in Earth Sciences in 2016.
Each of this year’s recipients will receive a $200,000 stipend. They are expected to interact with Northwestern faculty and students and engage in other on-campus scholarly activities throughout the year.
Emily Brodsky
Emily Brodsky was awarded the Nemmers Prize in Earth sciences for “fundamental, transdisciplinary contributions to understanding the physics of earthquake networks at all scales.” She is a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Brodsky studies the mechanics of how earthquakes are triggered as well as the constraining forces and processes that occur inside a fault zone during slip. Her work combines seismology, hydrogeology, structural geology and rock mechanics.
Brodsky earned her BA from Harvard University in 1995 and her Ph.D. in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 2001. She’s a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Geological Society of America (GSA), and is the recipient of many awards and honors for her work, including the 2008 James Macelwane Medal from the AGU, the 2019 Woollard Award from the GSA and the 2021 Price Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Ariel Pakes
Ariel Pakes received the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics in honor of his “fundamental contributions to the development of the field of empirical industrial organization as it is applied to the study of market power, prices, mergers and productivity.”
Pakes is the Thomas Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He received a BA and MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned an MA and PhD from Harvard.
His research focuses on analyzing market responses to environmental and policy changes. With his collaborators, he has studied various phenomena, including deregulation in the telecommunication industry, demand and product placement in the auto industry, the effects of incentives on doctors’ hospital allocations and consumers’ choices of health insurance plans, the evolution of bidding strategies in a new electric utility market and the development of improved consumer price indices.
A member of the Econometric Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, Pakes has received the Frisch Medal of the Econometric Society, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize, and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance and Management.
Bhargav Bhatt
Bhargav Bhatt was awarded the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics for his “revolutionary contributions to algebraic geometry in mixed characteristic through a new synthesis of ideas in topology, algebra and arithmetic.”
Bhatt earned his BS in applied mathematics from Columbia University and his MA and PhD in mathematics from Princeton. Currently, he is the Gehring Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan and the Fernholz Professor of Mathematics jointly with the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University.
An algebraic geometer, Bhatt studies algebraic geometry’s connection to number theory, commutative algebra and algebraic topology. He’s been elected a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and has received a number of prestigious awards, including a Packard Fellowship, a Compositio Prize, a Simons Investigatorship, a New Horizons Prize and a Clay Research Award.
Recipients of the Nemmers Prizes are expected to spend several weeks in residence at Northwestern University. In addition, seminars and conferences are often held in conjunction with their presence on campus.
