Maureen Raymo, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences (DEES), and Andrei Okounkov, the Samuel Eilenberger Professor of Mathematics, have been awarded the prestigious 2026 Nemmers Prize. Given by Northwestern University, the prize recognizes renowned leaders from institutions outside of Northwestern who have made lasting contributions to new knowledge or the development of significant new modes of analysis.
Professor Raymo, who in addition to her faculty position within DEES, is the Co-Founding Dean Emerita of the Columbia Climate School and past director of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, received the award in the category of Earth Sciences for her “pioneering development of hypotheses that explain climate change across Earth’s history and her educational leadership in the Earth system sciences.”
A member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Professor Raymo has leveraged knowledge of the inner workings of Earth’s solid, liquid and gaseous spheres to advance our understanding of how Earth’s systems interact, change and ultimately drive climatic change on geologic time scales. She is best known for developing the Uplift-Weathering Hypothesis, which borrows from and links various Earth system science sub-disciplines, including science that underpins our understanding of plate tectonics, mountain building, atmospheric science, ocean biogeochemistry, chemical weathering, the carbon cycle and climate change.
Professor Andrei Okounkov received the Prize in Mathematics for his “body of work of exceptional depth, breadth, and sustained impact on modern mathematics, spanning representation theory, algebraic geometry, probability and mathematical physics.”
His honors include the Fields Medal in 2006, the European Mathematical Society Prize and the Compositio Mathematica Prize. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Both prizes come with a $300,000 monetary award. Recipients of the award present lectures, participate in department seminars, and engage with Northwestern faculty and students in other scholarly activities.
The Arts and Sciences community congratulates Professor Raymo and Professor Okounkov on receiving these prestigious honors. Both will visit Northwestern during the 2026-27 academic year to engage in programming with faculty and students in their respective departments.
More information can be found on the Nemmers Prize website.
