Two local professors snagged Nobel Prizes yesterday for chemistry and economics.
The chemistry prize – awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm – went to Rockefeller University biophysicist Roderick MacKinnon, for his studies of the movement of ions through cell channels.
MacKinnon, 47, who runs Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics, will share the $1.3 million award with Peter Agre of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
NYU economics professor Robert Engle, 60, will split his prize with Clive Granger of Britain for their use of statistics to predict fluctuations in the financial markets.
Engle and Granger’s number-crunching process, known as “time series,” shows how interest rates, stock prices and other economic factors develop.
Engle, who teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said he was surprised and grateful.
“It’s the treat of a lifetime,” he said from France, where he is on sabbatical. With Post Wire Services