Professor Peter Rousseeuw is a renowned Belgian statistician who made a fortune working for Renaissance Technologies, one of the most successful hedge funds in the world. After studying and holding professorships in Belgium and Switzerland, he gained worldwide recognition for his work in ‘robust statistics’, a field that focuses on identifying outliers in large data sets. At the age of 45, he decided to leave his academic career behind and try his luck on Wall Street at Renaissance Technologies.
At Renaissance Technologies, founded by eccentric mathematician Jim Simons, Rousseeuw developed advanced computer models to analyse financial markets and make investment decisions. The fund achieved incredible profits with an annual return of 37 percent on average. With the millions he earned there, he established a prestigious prize for groundbreaking research in statistics, now known as the Rousseeuw Prize. This prize, which will be awarded for the second time in Leuven in 2024, rewards researchers with 1 million dollars for their contributions to statistics.
The creation and production of the prize medal was commissioned by Professor Rousseeuw to P. De Greef. For our company, such an assignment is of course a great honor. P. De Greef produces numerous prize medals every year, some of which originally date back to the twenties and thirties of the last century. The idea that the Rousseeuw Prize may still be awarded in 100 years is certainly a stimulating thought! The briefing for the design of the medal was quite simple: it had to show the portrait of Peter Rousseeuw on the obverse with a circular text. In the end, an “en face” portrait was chosen. A person is depicted en face if he is depicted straight from the front. In medal art, a representation “en profil” is the most commonly used; this has to do with an ancient tradition of depicting kings and emperors and goes straight back to the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Our sculptor first modelled the portrait of Rousseeuw in plasticine, a soft type of clay that does not harden, and made a copy of this in plaster. The finished plaster was then reduced in a 70 mm steel die. During this engraving process, the circular text was also added. The medal was then struck in bronze on a hydraulic press with a force of 600 tonnes. Finally, the medal is finished by hand and packed in a stylish Belgian luxury box, ready for the ceremonial presentation!
