The 2017 MacArthur Fellow Grants Have Just Been Awarded

The 2017 MacArthur Fellow grants are rewarding people from very varied fields.

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – The MacArthur Foundation released the names of its 2017 MacArthur Fellow Grants, also known as the “Genius Grant”. This year’s MacArthur Fellowship will be awarded to 24 “extraordinarily creative people”, coming from very diverse domains.

The 2017 MacArthur Fellow, a Non-Applications Award

The so-called Genius Grant is awarded each year by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It is usually awarded to anywhere in between 20 to 30 people that work in any field. According to the Foundation, the people that get a fellowship are not getting rewarded for a past accomplishment.

Instead, this is considered an “investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential”.

The Foundation also states that “Their work gives us reason for optimism and inspires us all.”

The 2017 MacArthur Fellow Grants include, this year, a painter and a playwright, a computer scientist and a mathematician and statistician. A historian, human rights activist, a historian, and psychologist are also among those awarded.

The full list of fellows, which come from a wide array of disciplines can be accessed on the Foundation’s site. This also offers a short description of each of this year’s MacArthur’s fellows and their work.

The Foundation decided to reward the people that have “shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”.

For this, each fellow will be receiving a $625,000 award, which is paid “with no strings attached”, over a period of five years.

The Foundation sees this as an “investment” in their potential. According to media reports, some of those awarded consider it a chance of really bringing their projects to life, and/or a way of “facilitating” their work.

The names of the 2017 MacArthur Fellows are: