The 2010 MacArthur Fellows were announced today. They are a distinguished and varied group.
This year there are 23 MacArthur Fellows, and each is the recipient of $500,000 to be given in equal annual increments of $100,00 over 5 years. The official announcement from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is here.
These awards are with no strings attached!
On the list is Annette Gordon-Reid, who is well-known to Fellows of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. The list also includes a computer security expert and researcher, a high school physics teacher, a biophysicist, an indigenous language preservationist, an economist, a fiction writer, an anthropologist, a theater director, a fiction writer, an entomologist, among others!
Two new Fellows are from the smallest state in the union -- Rhode Island! Sorry, I may have a bias since I have 4 degrees from Brown University in Providence and worked for several years in Newport, Rhode Island. Four new Fellows are from Massachusetts (3 of these from Cambridge)!
Interesting that over 25% of the 2010 Fellows are from the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts but, of course, those of us who live and work in New England know the creative atmosphere here (the distinct four seasons add to the stimulation and to our fortitude).
And speaking of Radcliffe Fellows, who were also MacArthur Fellows, see my earlier blogpost on Anna Schuleit and her public art installation, "Just a Rumor," at UMass Amherst (I hope that you recognize that face in the water since he certainly was a bona-fide genius)!
UMass Amherst has a former MacArthur Fellow, Professor Nancy Folbre on its faculty; she writes a weekly column on The New York Times Economix blog.
