Named for a renowned University of Chicago professor who shaped minds with his sense of duty and dedication to students, the Norman Maclean Faculty Award honors those who do the same.
As part of the 2026 Alumni Awards program, Prof. Emeritus Samuel Peltzman, PhD’65, will receive the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for his extraordinary contribution to teaching and student life at UChicago.
Established in 1997, the annual award recognizes those who carry on the spirit of Maclean, PhD’40, the acclaimed author of A River Runs Through It, who taught at UChicago for 40 years.
The awards are presented by the UChicago Alumni Association and the Alumni Board, which also have recognized eight alumni recipients for their professional achievements and service to the UChicago community. All of these honorees will be celebrated during Alumni Weekend from April 30 to May 3.
Learn more about this year’s Norman Maclean Faculty Award honoree:
Sam Peltzman is the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the UChicago Booth School of Business. He has served on the Chicago Booth faculty since 1973, and previously taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. He also served as senior staff economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
Peltzman’s research has focused on issues related to the interface between the public sector and the private economy. He has authored and edited several books and journal articles on government regulation and industrial organization. This includes work on banking, automobile safety, pharmaceutical innovation, the political economy of public education, and the economic analysis of voters and legislators.
Peltzman is an editor of the Journal of Law and Economics. He is the director emeritus of UChicago’s George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, which he led from 1991 to 2005.
