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With the possible exception of the Nobel awards, physicists seem to get all the press these days, whether they're doing quantum level work at the LHC, or cosmology via the latest satellite data. Biologists, not so much. It's too bad, because Richard Lenski is running one of the great evolutionary experiments of our time, and it's producing interesting results. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll on Oct 8, 2012 - 34 comments

The 2011 MacArthur “Genius" Fellowships have been announced ('07, '08, '09, '10 on the Blue). Among the recipients is Chicago-based architect Jeanne Gang. The 82-story Aqua Tower is her first skyscraper, and stands as the tallest building in the world designed by a woman.

"You know, a lot of architects get into fetishized objects,” she said to me. “But when you can design anything you want without actually having to make it, you do wild things that can’t work. And that’s not what I want to do.”
posted by obscurator on Sep 20, 2011 - 71 comments

$500,000. Five years. No strings attached. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced the 24 recipients of its 2009 "genius grants."
posted by oinopaponton on Sep 22, 2009 - 64 comments

Raising the Dead. When scientist Mark Roth's one-year-old daughter died after heart surgery, Roth obsessed clinically first about immortality, then about suspended animation, when all life processes temporarily cease. His subsequent research work -- placing yeast, nematodes, drosophila, frogs, and zebrafish into suspended animation (clinical death) for up to 24 hours, then reviving them unharmed -- earned him a MacArthur Fellowship and a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Award. [more inside]
posted by terranova on Dec 4, 2008 - 67 comments

Will Allen, the founder of Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, has won a MacArthur Genius grant. Growing Power uses aquaculture, vermiculture, and sustainable agriculture to raise food in an urban environment. Chefs of the region have taken notice, but that's not Growing Power's main purpose. Congratulations to only the second farmer to win a Genius Grant. [more inside]
posted by Eekacat on Sep 25, 2008 - 14 comments

Walter Kitundu is one of this year's MacArthur Fellows, a musician and artist who invents and builds new instruments from turntables, strings and the interactions of the elements. His recent invention, the Ocean Edge Device, uses the flow of the rushing tides to provide energy for on-board accordion and turntable instrumentation.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 25, 2008 - 7 comments

2008 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grants announced. Probably the biggest name is the New Yorker's music critic Alex Ross. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Sep 23, 2008 - 76 comments

Martin Puryear : artist, Peace Corps alumni, MacArthur Foundation Award recipient. A retrospective of his artwork (1977-2007) opens at The Museum Of Modern Art today. Also online here.
posted by R. Mutt on Nov 4, 2007 - 8 comments

The MacArthur Foundation awarded its "genius" grants yesterday. Among the winners was Jonathan Shay, a a VA psychiatrist whose midlife discovery of the Homeric epics inspired him to use their depictions of soldier bonding and cohesion, leadership, trust and betrayal, and terror and rage to treat the psychological disorders and transition difficulties of combat veterans. NPR interview.
posted by Miko on Sep 26, 2007 - 17 comments

Samuel Mockbee is my new hero. As the creator of Auburn University's Rural Studio and winner of a MacArthur Fellowship, he has his undergraduate students design and construct buildings. Not only are the structures they build attractive and functional, they are built in one of the poorest areas of the country, using discarded and recycled materials.
posted by Aaaugh! on Nov 29, 2000 - 2 comments

MacArthur Foundation genius grants -- I didn't get one this year, but Ben Katchor did. So did some other astonishing people, such as Patricia J. Williams, of whose column "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" in The Nation I am a particular fan.
posted by elgoose on Jun 14, 2000 - 2 comments