Two researchers with ties to Northwestern received Nobel Prizes this fall.

Aaron Ciechanover — a visiting professor at the Feinberg School of Medicine — won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering how a particular protein within cells targets other proteins. Ciechanover’s discovery of these cellular processes will help scientists understand how lung injuries occur as well as the make-up of normal and diseased cells.

Ciechanover, an Israeli who has taught at NU for two years, was awarded along with two other scientists for the discovery. He currently works with Feinberg researchers and mentors medical school students.

Edward Prescott, a former NU professor, won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for research on how governments affect economies worldwide. Now a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, he serves as an adviser to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Prescott shares the monetary award, worth about $1.3 million — like all Nobel Prizes — with Norwegian Finn Kydland. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is the Stockholm-based institution that awards the various Nobel prizes.

Prescott’s research develops the idea that governments and banks could see increased efficiency by adopting and following stable, long-term rules. Published in the late 1970s, the work encouraged policy-making among economies.

Prescott and Kydland examined monetary and fiscal policies in several countries, as well as how technology and changes in prices affect the business cycles.

Prescott’s win represents the fifth year in a row that an American took the prize in the economics awards.

The Nobel Prizes — awarded in the areas of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace — were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite.

The coveted prize in economics is the only Nobel prize not established explicitly in Nobel’s will. It was first begun in 1968 by the Swedish National Bank.

Both Nobel Prizes will be presented Dec. 10 in Stockholm, Sweden.

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