As MacArthur Fellowship Turns 15, Recipients Reflect On Its Impact

STARRY-EYED: Margie Profet used her MacArthur funds to switch fields of study. Margie Profet had been researching reproductive biology for 10 years when the call came, out of the blue, in 1993. On the line was an official with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, informing her that she had been named to join one of the most creative and elite groups of thinkers and doers in the world. Such a scene has been played out 479 times since 1981, when the first MacArthur Fellowships were awarded. The fellowship has grown from a new and sometimes confusing award into one of the United States' most celebrated honors. Grantees receive a cash award that ranges from $150,000 to $375,000 and comprehensive health coverage-all with no strings attached. Frank J. Sulloway: "My MacArthur period was the one period of my life when I wasn't living hand-to-mouth on a year-to-year basis . . . I could just do my work." There is no application process, and an anonymous nominating committee recommends recipients without their knowledge, rendering the phone call a complete surprise. For Profet, one of 146 scientists who have won a MacArthur, it provided the unexpected chance to pursue research in a new field. On the fellowship's 15th anniversary, she and several of her colleagues offer their interpretations of the incredible freedom that call brings. For example, by the time she received her fellowship, Profet had grown disenchanted with biology. "I wanted to do something different for a while-something more abstract," she recalls. "I was disillusioned with a lot of things in my field." With a new, independent source of funding, Profet adds, it was "easy for people to invite me" to work in their departments. Drawing on the degree she had earned in physics years before, she decided to accept an offer from the University of Washington to become a visiting scholar in its astronomy department for a year, beginning last January 1. "It's good to exercise other parts of your brain," Profet muses. "When in my life am I going to get the opportunity, as a biologist, to hang out in astronomy?" Since the MacArthur Foundation (http://www.macfdn.org) imposes no obligations on its winners, the fellows have been able to enjoy their prize in a wide variety of ways. Some use it as their sole source of income while devoting all of their time to research, and others use it to meet personal obligations that otherwise might divert them from their investigations. Several more use the money to launch risky, interdisciplinary projects that normally would not attract grant support. TUNE IN: Joel E. Cohen's piano and college-bound children were beneficiaries of his 1981 fellowship. "Financially it was a good thing, because it allowed me to overhaul my piano, which has helped me to stay sane," observes mathematical biologist and 1981 fellow Joel E. Cohen, chairman of the department of international and public affairs at Columbia University and head of the laboratory of populations and Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor at Rockefeller University. "Now that I have one child in college and another about to be, it's allowed me a little less anxiety about how I can pay those bills," he adds. Sharon R. Long, a professor in the biological sciences department at Stanford University, used her 1992 fellowship to set up an experiment she is conducting with a colleague in England, Allan Downie of the John Innes Institute. They are studying electrophysiology and signaling in the Vicia plant. "What we've done is a risky experiment between people in different countries that you never could have gotten a grant to do," Long declares. "It's something different, not mainstream." "The monetary award was extremely helpful, but the recognition was even more helpful," says John C. Bailar III, chairman of the department of health studies at the University of Chicago. "It has been important to me in getting the attention of people for some of the things I say and write, and I'm sure it was instrumental in some of the changes in my professional affiliations." Late last year, Bailar moved to Chicago from McGill University in Montreal, where he had been a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics. Indeed, while the fellowship's monetary aspect typically receives the greatest attention, many researchers note that what it signifies is equally important. VALIDATED: Ecologist Jane Lubchenco found her prize "liberating." For example, marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, a Distinguished Professor of Zoology at Oregon State University, has worked to connect her research to the formulation of environmental public policy. "That's sort of a chancy thing for scientists to be engaged in," she acknowledges. But when her MacArthur call came in 1993, Lubchenco's efforts were suddenly rewarded. "One of the major impacts that my MacArthur Fellowship had on me was to give me some independent validation that someone thought that many of the activities I had been engaged in were important," she says. "The fellowship was liberating and an encouragement to continue to do more of that, as well as work on the primary science." Peter H. Raven, director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis and home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, saw his 1985 fellowship as "a charter to do more" in his field. "What it did was make me redouble my commitment to the conservation of biological diversity," he states. "It wasn't so much a financial thing as a psychological thing with me. With that backing, I was determined to do a better job . . . . And I have put a lot more effort into it." Long takes pains to point out that the fellowship has a slightly different impact on its recipients in science-in which funding is often determined by peer review-from its effect on researchers in other fields. The media attention generated by a MacArthur raises a scientist's visibility "for about five minutes," she notes, but only in the public eye. "In science, it may not make nearly the kind of difference it makes in other areas," Long explains. "Science already has its own methods of evaluation. You're only as good as your next grant proposal. You're only as good as your next paper. That's one way you keep moving forward. Scientists, rightly, are somewhat skeptical, maybe, about what these kinds of things really mean, because the ultimate is your science, and that has to keep moving forward." JEALOUSY: His youth caused envy for some colleagues of Robert Root-Bernstein, who became a fellow at 27. Such a firm reliance on tangible accomplishments may have played a part in the occasionally chilly reception received by Robert S. Root-Bernstein, a member of the first class of fellows, in 1981. "When it first came out, there was a lot of comparison made to things like Nobel Prizes. This didn't help me at all, because I was just out of graduate school. I certainly hadn't won a Nobel Prize," remembers Root-Bernstein, now a professor of physiology at Michigan State University. "I was 27, and I had a fair number of older colleagues who made no bones about expressing their jealousy." In addition to envy, he had to face the confusion caused by the MacArthur's novelty. It was new, unknown, and different, and Root-Bernstein maintains that the initial questions on whether the MacArthur was a traditional fellowship cost him a postdoctoral fellowship with Jonas Salk at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. However, he also believes the five-year MacArthur commitment made up for the loss of the Salk fellowship. "Without it I couldn't have done the things I wanted to, and I wouldn't be here now," comments Root-Bernstein, who has raised controversy with his unconventional view that HIV alone may not cause AIDS (R.S. Root-Bernstein, The Scientist, April 4, 1994, p. 1). ". . . It gave me a long time to work on problems. That made a lot of research possible." The confidence inspired by a MacArthur Fellowship can be a powerful tool. Raven calls it "a great morale-booster." Others say the combination of validation and funds helped them launch major projects they otherwise would not have attempted. Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named a fellow in 1984. Since earning his doctorate in 1978, Sulloway has existed on a series of postdoctoral grants while attempting to complete a book. "When I got a MacArthur, I used that money, every penny of that, for full-time research for five years," he claims. "It was absolutely crucial to do the kind of massively intensive . . . project that I've been engaged in." The result is Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives, due to be published next month by Pantheon Books of New York. In it, Sulloway argues that birth order is the single best predictor of human behavior. Testing that hypothesis required the creation of a huge database featuring biographical details of thousands of people involved in 120 historical movements, beginning with the Protestant Reformation and including 28 revolutions in science. "It took 26 years, and I couldn't have done that study without the five years of uninterrupted support I got from the MacArthur Foundation," Sulloway declares. "My MacArthur period was the one period in my life when I wasn't living hand-to-mouth on a year-to-year basis. It was like Nirvana. I could just do my work. It alleviated the kind of nagging anxiety that comes from never knowing where your office is going to be and where your next meal is coming from." Cohen contends he may not have written his provocative How Many People Can the Earth Support? (New York, W.W. Norton and Co., 1995) without the inspiration of his MacArthur award. "One benefit that was quite important to me was the encouragement to think big and to undertake long projects with high risk and potentially high reward," he observes. "I think that the MacArthur Fellowship, which I got in 1981, encouraged me to undertake a major book project almost a decade later." Bailar currently is researching a book on "how science is really done." He says the fellowship gave him a strong start in a new professional direction. "I've never been terribly short on self-confidence in the things I know. But this was a new field for me. I simply couldn't have done this without the MacArthur support." And Lubchenco has used her MacArthur funds to help bolster the Paris-based Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), an international organization of scientists and decision-makers who jointly formulate sustainable resource activities and policies for a number of areas of the world. "It's long-term, it's ongoing, and the MacArthur funds really enabled it to come into fruition," she says. Induction into the select group of MacArthur fellows offers scientists the chance to meet and talk with their counterparts in the arts, humanities, public affairs, and social sciences. "I should also say that one of the benefits I had not appreciated until I experienced it was the tremendous network of other MacArthur fellows," Lubchenco states. "They are a dynamic, interesting, provocative, exciting group, and they've provided a very rich opportunity for thinking about different things in a way that's been really fun." Perhaps more than similar organizations, the MacArthur Foundation encourages such interaction, holding reunions every 18 months in Chicago to which all of the fellows are invited. The gatherings garner near unanimous rave reviews. Bailar calls them "absolutely wonderful," adding: "I've had just a remarkable experience in hearing and watching people whose expertise is in utterly different fields. My appreciation of the whole range of intellectual activities has really expanded." It is the diversity of talent in so many different fields that makes the reunions such a selling point. "The neat thing about them is you end up in long conversations with a lot of people you wouldn't meet otherwise," Profet contends. "I'm not a musician, but I meet a lot of musicians there, and we talk about music theory. Artists and poets-people you normally don't come in contact with. "I found it to be an unpretentious gathering. It's very free-form. You can go to the meetings or just hang out in the hallways and talk."With such abilities present in the same place at the same time, the potential for ego trips may seem large. But according to Lubchenco, that isn't the case. "There was not any element of arrogance. It was very open and very free, very energizing," she declares. "There were so many different ideas, different topics, different new ways of thinking about things. It was overwhelming. You have this tremendous smorgasbord of really interesting, exciting topics. It's just an incredible experience." If Long had her way, more of her colleagues would be eligible to be present at the reunions. "I wish they'd give more of these for science," she laments. "I think it's a way to let people pursue something, just looking for truth. That sounds corny, but I like seeing these given to scholars of any kind, whether they're studying medieval history or astronomy or whatever." That small wish aside, hardly any of the MacArthur fellows has a negative thing to say about the program. "It's been a lot of fun," acknowledges Profet, the biologist-turned-temporary astronomer. "Without the MacArthur, I couldn't have done this. Who would let me space out on space? It's a good move for me. I'm not bored. That's my indicator that I'm doing the right thing. It's a lot of fun to be here." And are there any disadvantages? "If there is a down side, it's that some people tend to take you more seriously than you deserve to be," Cohen says dryly.

As MacArthur Fellowship Turns 15, Recipients Reflect On Its Impact

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of