After concentrating in mathematics in undergraduate, Sims said he was weary of spending a career in the abstractions of upper-level mathematics. Instead, he would go on to earn his doctorate degree from Harvard in 1968 in economics, and then begin a career in academia—including as an assistant professor at Harvard from 1968 to 1970.

Sims joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1999. Alan S. Blinder recalled Princeton’s attempt to recruit Sims in 1990 as he had gotten to know Sims at various conferences.

“He is very straight-laced. He is very serious about what he does and very, very good at what he does,” Blinder said.

In addition to innovative research at Princeton, former students say that he was available and patient as an advisor and teacher.

“Whenever he was in Princeton whenever he was in his office, his door was always open, and I could just most of the time stop by and…in the worst case he would tell me to come back later or come back tomorrow,” Primaceri said. “His availability was incredible and the depth of his thought and of his suggestions and of his comments on my research were just you know I don’t know how to describe them, it was incredible.”

In 1995, Sims was the president of the Econometric Society. In 2012, he served as the president of the American Economic Association.

In 2011, Sims and New York University economist Thomas Sargent were awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. The “40-year path of friendly arguments and groundbreaking studies of how governments weigh policies to deal with economic troubles has led a pair of prominent economists to share the 2011 Nobel Prize in their field,” according to a Princeton press release.

The pair were recognized for their contribution to the field of macroeconomics and its applicable indications for banks and monetary policy.

“I was very happy to win it with Tom,” Sims said. “[T]he fact that they awarded the prize to us, I see as, a kind of affirmation of the importance of the approach to macroeconomics that we take that insists on connecting theory to data.”

Although Sims is grateful for the recognition the Nobel brings, he lamented the increased amount of time he has to spend traveling and said he is looking forward to an upcoming two month continuous stay in Princeton.

Meanwhile, he recently took up horseback riding as his wife Cathie has been an avid rider since a young. He continues to play the trombone and, according to Blinder and Primaceri, frequently engages in long discussions on current affairs.

—Staff writer Anja C. Nilsson can be reached at anjanilsson@college.harvard.edu. Follow her@anja_nilsson.