MacArthur Foundation awards best in creativity

Published September 18, 2006 in USA TODAY

By Marissa Levy, USA TODAY

When Edith Widder picked up the phone Wednesday, she was expecting to talk to a reporter for a scheduled interview. Instead, she got the call of a lifetime. "It was the best kind of trick," she said.

Widder, 55, a deep-sea explorer in Fort Pierce, Fla., learned she was one of 25 recipients to win $500,000 from the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program.

This year's winners of the "genius grants" come from a wide variety of fields, including medicine, sculpting, aviation engineering and playwriting.

The annual awards, which made their debut in 1981, recognize creative and original minds engaged in "unusual work" that will contribute to society, MacArthur president Jonathan Fanton says.

"This is a reminder that talent and commitment to public good can be found in many walks of life," Fanton says. "Creativity, or genius if you will, isn't only found in the high academics or sciences."

Award sponsors say the most unique aspect of the fellowship is that recipients receive their grant with "no strings attached" and can use the money as they see fit.

Widder, an inventor of new technologies to study underwater life, says she plans on using the money to start a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the study and protection of marine ecosystems.

"This money couldn't have come at a better time," says Widder, co-founder and director of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. "Our lofty goal is to become the premier marine organization in the U.S."

Other recipients:

• David Carroll, 64, naturalist author/illustrator in Warner, N.H.

• Regina Carter, 40, jazz violinist in New York City.

• Adrian LeBlanc, 42, narrative journalist in New York City who spent 10 years researching her first book, chronicling the effects of poverty on inner-city young people.

• Lisa Curran, 45, tropical forester researching the forests of Indonesian Borneo.

• Kevin Eggan, 32, developmental biologist and assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.

• John A. Rich, 46, physician and Drexel University professor studying health care of black men in urban environments.

• Atul Gawande, 40, surgeon, author and assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

• Linda Griffith, 46, bioengineer and director of Biotechnology Process Engineering Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in tissue engineering and synthetic regenerative technologies.

• Josiah McElheny, 39, sculptor in New York City.

• Shahzia Sikander, 37, painter in New York City whose work merges traditional South Asian art with contemporary styles.

• John Zorn, 53, musician, composer, founder and president of Tzadik Record Co. in New York City.

• Kenneth Catania, 40, comparative neurobiologist and associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

• D. Holmes Morton, 55, country doctor and research physician treating children afflicted with genetic diseases at the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pa.

• Claire Tomlin, 37, aviation engineer and associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University.

• Jennifer Richeson, 34, social psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Northwestern University who studies consequences of prejudice and racial stereotyping.

• Victoria Hale, 45, pharmaceutical entrepreneur and founder and CEO for the Institute for OneWorld Health, San Francisco.

• James Fruchterman, 47, chairman and founder of Benetech Initiative in Palo Alto, Calif., who adapts technologies into affordable devices for the visually impaired.

• David Macaulay, 59, author and illustrator in Norwich, Vt.

• Matias Zaldarriaga, 35, cosmologist and Harvard professor of astronomy and physics who analyzes faint signatures of the birth of the universe in the big bang.

• George Saunders, 47, short-story writer and creative-writing professor at Syracuse University.

• Terence Tao, 31, professor of mathematics at the University of California-Los Angeles.

• Sarah Ruhl, 32, playwright based in New York City.

• Anna Schuleit, 32, commemorative artist in New York City.

• Luis von Ahn, 28, computer scientist and assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.