Nobel Prize-winning professor Peter Diamond has pulled out of the race to become the next governor of the Federal Reserve.

"It is time for me to withdraw, as I plan to inform the White House," Diamond, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in an article published in the New York Times on Sunday. He titled his piece, "When A Nobel Prize Isn't Enough."

Nominated three times by President Barack Obama, Diamond's appointment has faced fierce Republican opposition