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Graciela Chichilnisky facts for kids

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Graciela Chichilnisky
Graciela Chichilnisky Economist.jpg
Born (1946-03-27) March 27, 1946 (age 79)
Citizenship United States
Education
Children 2, including E.J.
Scientific career
Institutions
Doctoral advisor
  • Jerrold Marsden (PhD in mathematics)
  • Gerard Debreu (PhD in economics)

Graciela Chichilnisky (born March 27, 1946) is an amazing Argentine-American economist. She is famous for her important work in economics and climate change. She teaches economics and statistics at Columbia University and also visits Stanford University. Her research often uses advanced math and topology. She also studies how countries trade with each other and how developing countries can grow. Graciela Chichilnisky is also a co-founder of a company called Global Thermostat. This company works on a special technology to remove carbon dioxide from the air. She was the CEO of Global Thermostat from 2010 until 2022.

Early Life and Education

Graciela Chichilnisky was born around March 27, 1946, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her parents were immigrants from Russia. Her father was a professor who taught about the brain at the University of Buenos Aires.

Graciela went to high school at the Instituto National de Lenguas Vivas. She also took science classes at a local university. After a big change in the government, her university was closed. One of her professors, Warren Ambrose, moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. He took six students with him, and Graciela was one of them. At that time, Graciela was a single mom raising her son, E.J. Chichilnisky.

Even though she didn't have a regular college degree, Graciela was accepted into a special program at MIT. She studied for her PhD in mathematics there from 1967 to 1968. Later, she moved to the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970, she earned a Master of Arts degree. The next year, she got her first Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in mathematics. In 1976, she earned another Ph.D. from Berkeley, this time in economics.

Since about 1991 or 1992, Graciela Chichilnisky has been an American citizen. In 2017, a group called the Carnegie Corporation of New York honored her. They named her one of 38 "Great Immigrants" for her contributions to her field. She lives in New York City and can speak English, Spanish, and French.

Career Highlights

After finishing her studies, Graciela Chichilnisky worked at Harvard University for a short time. In 1977, she became a professor of economics at Columbia University. She quickly became a full professor there in just two years.

From 1995 to 2008, she was a special professor for the UNESCO Chairs program, focusing on mathematics and economics. She also taught at the University of Essex in England for a year. Since 2015, she has been a visiting professor at Stanford University.

In 2010, Graciela Chichilnisky helped start Global Thermostat. This company uses a special technology called direct-air capture to remove carbon dioxide from the air. She was the CEO of the company for many years. In 2015, a business magazine even named her "CEO of the Year in Sustainability." In 2022, she stepped down as CEO. As of 2023, she is the CEO of a new company called GT Climate Innovation.

Important Research

Graciela Chichilnisky has written more than 17 books and over 330 scientific papers. She is very well known for helping to design the carbon market. This system is part of the Kyoto Protocol, which is an international agreement to fight climate change. The carbon market has been international law since 2005.

She was also a main author for the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This important report helped the group win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that year.

In her research on how countries trade, she showed interesting situations. For example, sometimes when one country gives goods to another, the country receiving the goods might actually end up worse off. She also studied why some strategies for developing countries to grow their exports might not work as expected.

Graciela Chichilnisky also works on how groups make decisions. She created a new way to understand how people make choices together. This field is now a special area of study around the world.

You can find a list of her many publications on her website. Other scientists have also written articles discussing her important work.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Graciela Chichilnisky para niños

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