They aren’t officially called the Genius Grants. They’re technically the much more demure and sober MacArthur Fellows or MacArthur Grants– but what fun is that? Even with the selection process cloaked in mystery (even though they deny it), the announcement each year of the MacArthur Fellows nevertheless gives a barometer of cultural thinking and trends of the time. For example, leave Ta-Nehisi Coates off the list this year and risk irrelevance.
But it’s also worth noting: if you didn’t get one you might still be a genius. They only started this who’s a genius thing in 1981 — and myriad geniuses predate the MacArthur. Thomas Edison never got one. Carry on.
Here are this year’s MacArthur Award winners:
Patrick Awuah, Education Entrepreneur; Ashesi University College; Accra, Ghana
Kartik Chandran, Environmental Engineer; Columbia University; New York, New York
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Journalist; The Atlantic; Washington, District of Columbia
Gary Cohen, Environmental Health Advocate; Health Care Without Harm; Reston, Virginia
Matthew Desmond, Urban Sociologist; Harvard University; Cambridge, Massachusetts
William Dichtel, Chemist; Cornell University; Ithaca, New York
Michelle Dorrance, Tap Dancer and Choreographer; Dorrance Dance/New York; New York, New York
Nicole Eisenman, Painter; New York, New York
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Photographer and Video Artist; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Chicago, Illinois
Ben Lerner, Writer; City University of New York, Brooklyn College; New York, New York
Mimi Lien, Set Designer; New York, New York
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Playwright, Composer, and Performer; New York, New York
Dimitri Nakassis, Classicist; University of Toronto; Toronto, Canada
John Novembre, Computational Biologist; University of Chicago; Chicago, Illinois
Christopher Ré, Computer Scientist; Stanford University; Stanford, California
Marina Rustow, Historian; Princeton University; Princeton, New Jersey
Juan Salgado, Community Leader; Instituto del Progreso Latino; Chicago, Illinois
Beth Stevens, Neuroscientist; Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Boston, Massachusetts
Lorenz Studer, Stem Cell Biologist; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; New York, New York
Alex Truesdell, Adaptive Designer and Fabricator; Adaptive Design Association Inc.; New York, New York
Basil Twist, Puppetry Artist and Director; New York, New York
Ellen Bryant Voigt, Poet; Cabot, Vermont
Heidi Williams, Economist; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Cambridge, Massachusetts
Peidong Yang, Inorganic Chemist; University of California, Berkeley; Berkeley, California
