"This is a very nice surprise," said Lars Hansen, Nobel Prize winner.
It's safe to say Professor Lars Hansen and Professor Gene Fama are having a pretty good day. The two men received the Nobel Prize for economics. The calls came early this morning to the men, who were not anxiously waiting by the phone.
"I was preparing my class actually," said Eugene Fama, Nobel Prize winner.
"Doing dog walking and getting ready to go off and exercise when I got the call," said Hansen.
Teaching here since 1963, Fama is best known for his research which shows certain groups of stocks tend to outperform over time.
Hansen is known as the developer of a technique used to help us understand how to better formulate, analyze and test economic models.
The Nobel Prize honors their work in understanding trends in the markets. The news of the Nobel Prize came as no big surprise to their students.
"Professor Fama we've kind of been expecting him to win it for some time now so it's almost some relief because we really wanted him to win it. It's an honor to be his student. Professor Hansen, we all expected him to win it, but not so soon," said John Shim, student, University of Chicago.
The University of Chicago is home to 86 Nobel Prize winners, 26 of them in economic sciences. Both professors say they plan to stick to their schedules today and carry-on teaching their students.
In total, three men won the economics Nobel Prize. The third professor teaches at Yale University. The men will share the prize jackpot of about $1.25 million.
