Chris Sims '63: Mathematician, Economist, and Many Things In-Between

During his freshman year at Harvard College, Christopher A. Sims ’63 remembers a mathematics teaching assistant warning him about a career in math.

“You would make a fine mathematician,” he recalled the teaching assistant saying. “But as a mathematician, you won’t be able to change the world.”

Sims pursued his undergraduate degree in mathematics but would later go on to study economics, winning a Nobel Prize for his work on fiscal theory and macroeconomics. The heralded academic—whose awarded work focuses on monetary policy—was an active member of the Class of 1963, manifesting his many interests across campus.

Choosing to make a career in applicable economics instead of abstract mathematics, Sims has striven to connect the theory with the data—a dedication to both the abstract and the literal that defines not only his career, but his life as both an academic, activist, father, husband, and horseback rider.

PASSION FOR ACTION

A member of the Harvard University Band, a club rugby player, a political activist, and a math prodigy, Sims was active around campus during his time at Harvard.

Sims was born in 1942 in Washington D.C.. His father—employed by the State Department—moved the family to Germany for two years when Sims was five. After Germany, the family moved to Virginia and then Connecticut. Sims was the third-string linebacker for the Greenwich High School football team and played trombone in the band.

He continued playing trombone for Harvard’s band, and switched football for club rugby and the occasional soccer game.

As an undergraduate, Sims was also involved in the student group called Tocsin, which supported policies to the left of President Kennedy and focused on nuclear proliferation.

As a member of Tocsin, Sims helped plan a march on Washington to urge President Kennedy to continue his temporary halt of nuclear testing and to give up the administration’s fallout shelter program. The march brought 60,000 students to the Washington mall.

Organizing the march “was exciting, and we felt that we had a little bit of an impact,” Sims said. “[I’m] not sure if we really did but that was kind of a high point.”

Todd A. Gitlin ’63, former president of Tocsin, remembered spending time in the car on the way to the march and remarked that Sims was easy going and cool under pressure.

As a junior, Sims organized a group of Tocsin students to travel to Connecticut to campaign for a proliferation candidate, Frank Kowalski, as a part of a larger effort to advocate for the ban of nuclear weapons. Sims said at the time that he hoped the activism would add to the larger conversation of constructive criticism that Tocsin hoped to inform.

“In Tocsin he was thoughtful, easy-going, committed, passionate about turning around the arms race, and enormously liked and respected by everyone. I mean everyone,” said fellow Tocsin member Peter C. Goldmark ’62.

BEYOND THE ABSTRACT

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.