Glaeser’s model also offers an analysis of hatred toward 19th-century European Jews and 19th-century blacks, he says.

“I write a lot of quick and dirty papers,” Glaeser says. “But this is unquestionably the work in my life that I have loved most and cared about getting right...I have reconfigured the model 14 different ways; it has been a huge amount of work for a 45-page paper.”

Glaeser teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

And he has won the respect of his colleagues.

“I think there’s a good chance Ed will win a Nobel Prize,” Cutler says.

Glaeser is the author of dozens of articles on cities, economic growth, and law and economics and the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He recently co-authored the book Fighting Poverty in the U.S. and Europe with Alberto Alesina, the Ropes professor of political economy and chair of the Department of Economics.

PROBING THE PLAGUE

Michael McCormick, Goelet professor of medieval history, is exploring new horizons of medieval history by applying biological science to historical problems.

“[McCormick] is known as the elaborator of one of the genuinely grand theories of medieval history,” says professor of history James Hankins.

In his 2002 book, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300-900, which was 10 years in the works, McCormick challenged the long-standing theory that the unexpected rise and advance of Islam led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.

McCormick argues that Europe was richer than had been believed and that the economy was driven primarily by the exportation of slaves on a massive scale.

“This grand theory…alone gives him the claim to being the greatest medieval historian now living,” Hankins says.

Largely as a result of this work, McCormick was a recipient of one of the 2002 Distinguished Achievement Awards celebrating the humanities, which are given by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The award includes a $1.5-million grant.

McCormick says he plans to use this money to pursue a wide range of projects on a variety of subjects ranging from saints’ lives to DNA to Carolingian coins to rats. At the root of all of these projects is a desire to create historical knowledge using the breakthroughs of natural science and the computer revolution, he says.

“He is brilliant in the use and elaboration of evidence...archeological evidence, coins, fossilized pollen,” Hankins says.