Professor from Northwestern wins Nobel for Economics

Illinois has made investments into education through its schools and teachers and that has been evident recently as Northwestern is now home to a Nobel Prize winner.

Northwestern University’s very own Professor Joel Mokyr has earned the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He has earned this award along with Phillippe Aghion of the Collège de France, Peter Howitt from Brown University, as they all collaborated in creating a mathematical model for a theory regarding sustained growth amidst creative destruction.

Mokyr’s works such as “A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy,” and “The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress,” aims at learning what factors drove the Industrial Revolution to be what it was and how it impacted world history from an economic standpoint.  His works also explain how developing nations can attain and developed nations maintain creativity within the technological sector of their economies to keep up with the evolving times that we are in.

Professor Mokyr curated his knowledge through his undergraduate education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968, majoring in economics and history. He also went on to get a master’s degree in economics from Yale in 1972 and a PhD from Yale in 1974.

Professor Mokyr is known by fellow colleagues at Northwestern as deeply impactful and visionary with his views on where our modern and future economy could look like.

The Nobel Prize in Economics is the one of several awards for the storied professor, the most recent being in 2018 when he won the Elinor Ostrom Prize for his written piece “Cognitive Rules, Institutions and Economic Growth: Douglass North and Beyond.” He has also won the 2006 Heineken Award for History and the International Balzan Prize for his innovative research regarding the history of Europe and the origins of technological change.

From Chicago Clubs to Global Stages: The Smashing Pumpkins’ Illinois Legacy

The Smashing Pumpkins stand as one of Chicago’s most important musical exports, blending alternative rock, dream-pop textures, and heavy guitar layers into a sound that came to define the 1990s. 

Originally formed in 1988 by Billy Corgan, James Iha, D’arcy Wretzky, and Jimmy Chamberlin, the band developed its roots in the vibrant Chicago music scene. Unlike the grunge explosion happening in Seattle at the time, the Smashing Pumpkins carved out a distinctive Midwestern identity by fusing aggression with a lush, almost orchestral sense of melody. Chicago’s diverse underground scene, ranging from punk clubs to blues bars, gave the group both a testing ground and a cultural backdrop that shaped their music’s emotional intensity.

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Visitors witness massive reptile migration at Shawnee National Forest

Illinois is no stranger to deer crossings, but did you know that twice a year, one of the largest snake migrations in the United States takes place in Illinois as well?  For two months in spring and fall every year, Forest Road 345, more commonly known as ‘Snake Road’ is shut down for a nearly three mile stretch to allow up to 23 species of snakes to migrate between their winter habitat in the forest’s limestone bluffs and their summer base at LaRue Swamp.

Like many wildlife species, snakes face a dangerous obstacle when crossing trafficked roads. Snakes are particularly vulnerable because of their cold-blooded nature. Black asphalt is good at holding on to heat from the sun, and in the cooler early morning and twilight hours, snakes often like to lie out and bask in the warmth, rather than dart across the road quickly like other animals. This can have a deadly impact on snake populations; researchers estimate that up to 25% of all snakes are killed by drivers.

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The Pumpkin Capital of the World – Morton, Illinois

Located in Central Illinois, Morton is a small town with a big claim to fame: it is the Pumpkin Capital of the World. Known for its pumpkin patches, festivals and rich agricultural history, Morton has earned its title serving as the headquarters of the world’s largest pumpkin processing company – Libby’s.

Each year, Morton produces more pumpkins than any other place in the U.S. The town’s fields and surrounding areas yield millions of pumpkins, providing 95% of the canned pumpkin in the country and 85% of the canned pumpkin worldwide. Libby’s has been a major player in Morton’s identity since the 1970s when the factory began exclusively processing pumpkins.

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