CHICAGO, Sept. 29 (UPI) — The MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grant” fellowships were awarded Tuesday to 24 people in the arts, businesses and sciences and include Lin-Manuel Miranda of the Tony-winning play Hamilton.
The annual awards of the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation come with a $625,000 stipend, allotted over five years. There are no requirements or limitation regarding how the honorees spend the stipend.
The prize is typically awarded to young, entrepreneurial Americans still pursuing their careers, whose work is influential across genres and disciplines.
Miranda, for example, is the author, composer and star of Hamilton, a rap-influenced musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton.
Other MacArthur laureates announced are Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of a bestselling memoir on being black in America, Between the World and Me; archaeologist Dmitri Nakassis; and Alex Truesdell, founder of Adaptive Design Association Inc., a non-profit group which builds and modifies devices for the handicapped.
Part of the lore of the MacArthur Foundation grants, which have come to signify life-changing acknowledgement of a laureate’s work and promise, include stories of how each recipient learned of his or her award. Miranda assumed the phone call he received was from his cable company, whose service he cancelled the day before. Puppeteer Basil Twist thought a bill collector was calling and interrupting a rehearsal. Artist Nichole Eisenman was buying meat in a grocery store when the call came.
The full list includes education entrepreneur Patrick Awuah, 50; environmental engineer Kartik Chandran, 41; author Coates, 39; environmental health advocate Gary Cohen, 59; urban sociologist Matthew Desmond, 35; chemist William Dichtel, 37; choreographer Michelle Dorrance, 36; painter Eisenman, 50; photographer and video artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, 33; writer Ben Lerner, 36; theatrical set designer Mimi Lien, 39, New York; playwright Miranda, 35; archeologist Nakassis, 40; biologist John Novembre, 37; computer scientist Christopher Ré, 36; historian Marina Rustow, 46; community leader Juan Salgado, 46; neuroscientist Beth Stevens, 45; biologist Lorenz Studer, 49; entrepreneur Truesdell, 49; puppeteer Twist, 46; poet Ellen Bryant Voigt, 72; economist Heidi Williams, 34 and chemist Peidong Yang, 44.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.