Marilda Sotomayor, 82, a Brazilian mathematician and professor emerita at the University of São Paulo (USP), is one of the world's leading experts in game theory, a field she helped develop alongside Alvin Roth, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics. In the 1980s she worked with Roth at the University of Pittsburgh and co-authored Two-Sided Matching, a book that helped establish matching theory—an efficient allocation method now widely used in organ transplants and university admissions. Roth says Marilda "was always a better mathematician" than he was.Before moving to Pittsburgh, Marilda worked with David Gale at Berkeley, where she solved over a single weekend a lemma that Gale had been unable to prove. After reviewing her proof, he reportedly exclaimed: "Bravo, bravo, you proved it, you proved it!"
Despite international recognition—including six Nobel laureates in economics taking part in the conference she organizes at USP—Marilda faced gender bias and resistance from colleagues in Brazil, who did not value game theory. She turned down invitations to move permanently to the United States, choosing instead to remain in Brazil.
Experts such as Pérez-Castrillo and Humberto Moreira acknowledge the scientific importance of her work and say it is reasonable to debate whether she deserves a Nobel Prize, although there is no consensus. Vinicius Carrasco believes her work would not merit the prize, but still regards her contribution as one of the greatest ever made by a Brazilian economist. Marilda herself says she never aspired to the Nobel, always preferring to focus on "problems to solve."
