Eugene Fama (M.B.A. ’63, Ph.D. ’64), the Robert R. McCormick distinguished service professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), received the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute’s Nicholas Molodovsky Award late May for his contributions to portfolio theory and asset pricing.

The CFA’s highest distinction recognized Fama’s research on how investors use diversification to strengthen their portfolios, as well as work on estimating the market value of a financial asset.

Fama joins past recipients such as Carnegie Corporation vice chair Martin Leibowitz, (A.B. ’55, S.M. ’56); Harvard University Business School professor and Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton; and the late Nobel Laureate and GSB finance professor Merton Miller, with whom Fama coauthored a textbook.

Serving also as director of research at investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors, Fama received the first Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics last October, which carried a €50,000 (approximately $64,000) cash prize.

The CFA also honored AQR Capital Management co-founder Clifford Asness (M.B.A. ’91, Ph.D. ’94) with the James R. Vertin Award for his research.

Formerly the director of quantitative research at Goldman, Sachs & Company’s asset management division, Asness found that dividend-paying companies tend to show improved earnings growth over companies that do not pay dividends.

Asness was Fama’s student and teaching assistant for two years during his time at the GSB.