25 MacArthur ‘Genius Prizes’ Recognize Exceptionally Creative Americans

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in Chicago, has announced the 25 recipients of its 2006 MacArthur Fellowships.

The fellowships, often referred to as “the genius awards,” recognize people in a broad range of disciplines who show exceptional creativity and the potential for continued innovative work.

Each award provides $500,000 over five years and comes with no stipulations, allowing each fellow to use the money as he or she sees fit.

No one may apply for a MacArthur Fellowship. Each year the foundation chooses several hundred people from diverse fields who serve anonymously as nominators. A 12-member selection committee then recommends final candidates to the foundation’s Board of Directors.

Including the recipients announced last week, the foundation has named a total of 732 fellows since the program’s inception in 1981. Recipients must be U.S. citizens or residents and may not be elected officials or hold high government positions.

Sixteen of the new fellows work for academic institutions or other nonprofit groups, including two nonprofit officials whose work harnesses cutting-edge technology to aid poor people:

• Victoria Hale, who six years ago founded the Institute for OneWorld Health, a San Francisco nonprofit pharmaceutical group that seeks to develop low-cost drugs for malaria and other diseases that are widespread in developing countries.

• James Fruchterman, who in 2000 established the Benetech Initiative, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, Calif., that adapts technologies to help raise literacy rates and improve the lives of low-income people worldwide.

“There is something palpable about this group of MacArthur Fellows — about their character as explorers and pioneers at the absolute cutting edge,” said Daniel J. Socolow, director of the MacArthur Fellows Program, in a statement.

“These are people pushing boldly to change, improve, and protect our world, to make it a better place for all of us.”

Mr. Fruchterman received a telephone call last week from Jonathan F. Fanton, the foundation’s president, informing him of the fellowship. The call came following a rather elaborate ruse: After a fake interview fell through, a friend who is a senior official at a scientific institution called to ensure that Mr. Fruchterman would be available to take a call from some “well-connected philanthropists” interested in his work.

“I had no clue,” he says. “And believe it or not, I had a meeting scheduled at MacArthur two days later. They said, sure, come on out, and while I was there they told me that there was another San Francisco Bay Area recipient, but were understandably evasive as to who it was.”

“I said, I sure hope it’s Victoria Hale, who is someone I just love. We need 100 Victorias and Jims out there, involving people from the technology, scientific, and medical communities, using their skills not just to get rich, but to help people.”

Mr. Fruchterman plans to use part of the money to write a book about the power of technology to solve social problems.

The morning the MacArthur Fellowships were announced, he heard a report on his local public-radio station, KQED, about the winners. The station was running a pledge drive, and, following the report, the announcer exhorted “any MacArthur fellows out there to call in with a pledge,” says Mr. Fruchterman. “So I called them right back and issued a $1,000 challenge. They were certainly surprised.”

Following are the 2006 fellows, along with their institutional affiliations and a synopsis of the foundation’s descriptions of their achievements:

David Carroll, 64, author and illustrator, Warner, N.H. He has written several books on the ecology of New England’s deciduous hardwood forests and wetland habitats, providing detailed descriptions of creatures that live in swamps, bogs, and other areas threatened by human development.

Regina Carter, 40, jazz violinist, New York. Her repertoire is based on wide-ranging musical influences — including Afro-Cuban, bebop, and folk music — and places the violin in a solo role in jazz music, a genre in which it is not typically featured.

Kenneth Catania, 40, associate professor, department of biological sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville. A neurobiologist, his study of the star-nosed mole and other mammalian insectivores provides insights into the organization and evolution of the sensory cortex.

Lisa Curran, 45, professor, School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Her work incorporates field ecology, satellite remote sensing, and examinations of economic, political, and social factors to help curb deforestation in tropical locales.

Kevin Eggan, 32, assistant professor, department of molecular and cellular biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. He is a developmental biologist whose work on the use of nuclear-transfer and stem-cell technologies could lead to therapeutic applications for diseases such as Parkinson’s and insulin-dependent diabetes and provide information on the environmental and genetic factors that cause those diseases.

James Fruchterman, 47, chairman and founder, the Benetech Initiative, Palo Alto, Calif. An electrical engineer, he adapts state-of-the-art technologies for use as affordable devices for people who traditionally have limited access to such technology, including visually impaired people, human-rights activists, and humanitarian-aid workers who are deactivating land mines.

Atul Gawande, 40, assistant professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. He is a surgeon and author who analyzes medical ethics and protocols and seeks simple solutions to human-based medical complications and errors.

Linda Griffith, 46, professor, departments of biological and mechanical engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Her work merges anatomy, cell-surface chemistry, materials science, and physiology to augment traditional biomedical engineering and its potential to diagnose disease and regenerate damaged organs.

Victoria Hale, 45, founder and chief executive officer, Institute for OneWorld Health, San Francisco. Her nonprofit group acquires the rights to promising pharmaceutical compounds that have been left undeveloped or deemed unprofitable and uses them to work toward potential cures for parasite-borne diseases that affect millions of poor people worldwide.

Adrian LeBlanc, 42, narrative journalist, New York. She specializes in “immersion reporting,” and spent 10 years with a family in the Bronx before she wrote Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, which was published in 2003.

David Macaulay, 59, author and illustrator, Norwich, Vt. His illustrated books on architecture, engineering, and other disciplines “demystify the workings and origins of objects as mundane as a stapler and as monumental as a cathedral.”

Josiah McElheny, 39, sculptor, New York. He draws upon both the decorative and functional traditions of blown glass to explore such disparate subjects as the Big Bang theory and 16th-century Italian painting.

D. Holmes Morton, 55, research physician, Clinic for Special Children, Strasburg, Pa. A “country doctor,” he treats local Amish and Mennonite children afflicted with genetic diseases, shedding light on genetically based maladies affecting other isolated populations.

John A. Rich, 46, professor, department of health management and policy, Drexel University, Philadelphia. He designs clinical and peer-based programs to help meet the health-care needs of young African-American men in urban settings.

Jennifer Richeson, 34, associate professor, department of psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. A social psychologist, she studies the behavioral and cognitive effects of racial prejudice and stereotyping in order to explore the dynamics of interracial interaction.

Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright, New York. Her works include “Passion Play: A Cycle,” in which she traces the politics of religion from the Elizabethan Age to modern times, and “Orlando,” an adaptation of the novel by Virginia Woolf.

George Saunders, 47, professor of creative writing, Syracuse University, New York. His short-story collections combine seemingly discordant elements, including satire, surrealism, and colloquial language.

Anna Schuleit, 32, artist, New York. Her installation pieces commemorate the lives of patients in mental-health institutions by transforming abandoned facilities into memorials that incorporate music, flowers, and other elements.

Shahzia Sikander, 37, painter, New York. Her artworks fuse the age-old South Asian art of miniature painting with contemporary art forms and styles, including digital animation.

Terence Tao, 31, professor, department of mathematics, University of California at Los Angeles. He is a mathematician whose work includes a recent proof of a longstanding conjecture about the existence of arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions consisting only of prime numbers.

Claire Tomlin, 37, associate professor, department of aeronautics and astronautics, Stanford University, in California. An aviation engineer, she analyzes control systems and applies the results to air-traffic control, military operations, and other scenarios.

Luis von Ahn, 28, assistant professor, department of computer science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. His work — which examines the intersections of artificial intelligence, cryptography, and human intelligence — has led to computer-security solutions and other interactive applications.

Edith Widder, 55, co-founder and director, Ocean Research and Conservation Association, Fort Pierce, Fla. She is a biologist and deep-sea explorer who uses oceanographic research and develops tools to help reverse the decline of marine ecosystems.

Matias Zaldarriaga, 35, professor, departments of astronomy and physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. A theoretical astrophysicist, he studies the formation and early history of the universe.

John Zorn, 53, musician and composer, New York. He is an avant garde saxophonist, composer, and producer whose work in improvisational music transcends traditional genres.