MacArthur Foundation: An End to `Genius Awards' in Science?

Scientists fantasizing about a phone call out of the blue saying that the MacArthur Foundation wants to give them several hundred thousand dollars they haven't even asked for may have to start reworking their daydreams. For when John Corbally retires as president of the $2.5 billion John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in May after 10 years on the job, there may well be some changes in the foundation's science funding. Corbally says that the Chicago-based foundation's so-called "genius awards" - about a quarter of a million dollars for the recipient to do with pretty much as he or she wants - could be coming to an end in science. MacArthur has been giving out these awards since 1981, and last year nine of the 31 awards went to scientists. Charles Archambeau, a theoretical geophysicist at the University of Colorado whose work on seismic source theory has had implications for nuclear weapons testing and testing detection. Philip DeVries, a lepidopterist whose work in Costa Rica has been critical for tropical conservation efforts. Helen Edwards, the physicist who heads the accelerator division of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. John Fleagle, a primate paleontologist and professor of anatomy at the School of Medicine at SUNY, Stony Brook. Raymond Jeanloz, a geologist interested in mineral physics and high-pressure petrology at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin Kahl, an ornithologist in Sedona, Ariz., who specializes in storks, spoonbills, and flamingos. Naomi Pierce, a biologist at Princeton studying plant-insect evolution. Robert Shaw, a theoretical and experimental physicist studying information flow in chaotic and dynamical systems at the Center for Systems Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana. Alan Walker, a paleontologist specializing in human evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, holding appointments at the National Museum of Kenya and Johns Hopkins University. MacArthur, according to Corbally, is considering ending these science fellowships because research these days seems to be done almost entirely by teams, not by lone geniuses. He explains that MacArthur board member Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, "has not been persuaded that the program is of great benefit to science." Gell-Mann is questioning the fellowships, and Corbally says the board is not going to dismiss his concerns without debate. "The fellowships work beautifully for writers, poets, and historians," Corbally says, but for science, the board plans to do some serious reevaluation. In fact, the foundation is now at the point where all of its current major programs are due for serious evaluation, Corbally says. "We need to see if the purposes [of the programs] are still valuable, and if the programs are indeed still serving those purposes," he explains. "This comes, not out of any sense of dissatisfaction, but from a sense that we periodically have to make sure that satisfaction is at least somewhat objectively based." He adds, however, that he does not expect any of the broad categories of foundation involvement, such as the environment and health issues, to change drastically. "Even if we do find we're at the wrong place at the wrong time, we would evolve rather than move precipitously," says Corbally. Science programs will come under scrutiny along with the rest of MacArthur philanthropy. While not massive overall, MacArthur's science funding has become important to research in certain disciplines such as mental health and parasitology. The foundation is the major private funder of mental health research in the country and is second only to the federal government in the amount of financial support it supplies. While the thrust of Mac-Arthur's funding has emphasized multidisciplinary communication among scientists, the foundation has also paid for the laboratory development of promising medical treatments for depression. In parasitology, another of the fields where Corbally thinks MacAr-thur dollars make a difference, the program ironically did not originate with the foundation. It "clearly follows the Rockefeller Foundation program," he says. "MacArthur picked up the program, which Rockefeller was on the verge of dropping - a Rockefeller scientist named Ken Warren even initiated the [transfer] process." Thus the MacAr-thur Foundation committed $20 million over a five-year period to parasitology projects. The initiative is now in its third year. The foundation also funds research in other hard sciences, and Corbally says these grants will continue to be initiated primarily by three board members: Gell-Mann, Jerry Wiesner (former president of MIT), and Jonas Salk (founding director of the Salk Institute). The ideas for these projects develop with staff input and a heavy emphasis on expert consultation. Of course, the fact that board members initiated the ideas does not necessarily mean the full board always approves them. FOUNDING: Created by John D. MacArthur in 1978 from the profits of his multibillion-dollar real estate and insurance company holdings. ASSETS: $2.5 billion MAJOR PROGRAMS AND 1987 SPENDING: Health ($17.8 million), fellows program ($9.7 million), peace and international cooperation ($20.2 million), world environment and resources ($9.4 million), education ($5.1), population (new), "special grants" such as community activities in Chicago and Palm Beach County, Fla. ($21.9 million), and a "general program" for projects in mass communications, justice, and institutional support ($43.9 million). SAMPLE GRANTS IN SCIENCE: Molecular genetic studies of affective disorders. $167,627 to K. Kidd and M. Weissman, Yale Research residencies as part of the M.D./Ph.D. program. $240,000 under the direction of L. Eisenberg, Harvard Basic research and training related to biology of parasitic diseases. $362, 524 under the direction of John David, Harvard Work on AIDS vaccine. $300,000 under the direction of M. Gardener, University of California, Davis As well as funding research, MacArthur has plunged into policy questions in areas of scientific concern. Corbally sees the foundation's basic approach in these areas remaining the same: MacArthur has often tried to forge new multidisciplinary teams of experts to approach basic policy questions. For example, much of the information and sense of urgency about the greenhouse effect trumpeted in the media last summer came from the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., an institution created with MacArthur funds. The institute does not fund basic research, but it brings scientists together from various disciplines to outline the problems and possibilities in ways that policy makers can evaluate. MacArthur has also funded similar networking groups among mental health scientists. Another challenge that the foundation must face in the coming decade is the need to give away more money, perhaps doubling its current donations. By law, the organization is required to disburse approximately 5% of its assets in the form of grant funding. MacArthur now meets that 5% requirement, but since the assets are expected to grow in the next decade (particularly the value of some undeveloped land in Florida), the foundation will have to increase its spending to obey the law. What that money might mean to science is not clear at the moment. All Corbally will say is that the MacArthur board has long been contemplating making grants in the area of population control but could find "no handle" for dealing with such a huge and amorphous concern - one that is fraught with often-conflicting concerns of politics, religion, and cultural anthropology. But he feels that the foundation is inching toward that handle by discussing a program designed to educate local leadership on the population control issue. Although Corbally will be leaving day-to-day work on these issues when he retires in May, he will remain on the board "to harass the new administration," as he good-naturedly puts it. That new administration will be in the hands of Adele Smith Simmons, currently president of Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts. Previously she worked as dean at Tufts and at Princeton, and she has served on numerous nonprofit as well as corporate boards. Simmons comes from a prominent Chicago business family and her father was Herman Dunlap Smith, an associate in the insurance business of John D. MacArthur. "Dutch" Smith, as he was known, served on the board of many of Chicago's major cultural and intellectual institutions and helped found the Adler Planetarium. There's no hard science in Simmons's academic background (she's a specialist in African affairs), although she is a member of the board of the Union of Concerned Scientists. However, she has a track record of support for the hard sciences. During her presidency of Hampshire, the school created a model science program aimed at turning liberal arts students into science majors. Simmons is not a newcomer to the MacArthur fold. She has been a "nominator," one of that mysterious group of individuals hired by the foundation to help find future MacArthur Fellows. She doesn't talk about it because, as she explains, "they try to keep the whole thing very confidential." She says she got the nominator job because "in the course of what I do, I tend to meet a lot of very talented people, some of whom would benefit enormously from a MacArthur Fellowship." She has not nominated anyone in the sciences, only in her own discipline of history. Her role at MacArthur will probably be similar to her pre-decessor's - essentially a facilitator. As Corbally puts it, "The president is asked to be the conductor of an expert ensemble rather than the composer of the music. You emphasize things here and there." The real power at MacArthur, according to Corbally, rests in an unusually active and involved board. "Much of what the board is expected to do verges on responsibilities that would otherwise be left to the president's staff," he says. "There are some 67 staffers at the foundation, which is not a lot if you're distributing $130 million a year. The cutting edge [of ideas for grants] is expected to be brought in through the board." The members seem disinclined to disturb this arrangement. Corbally says, "It was not the expectation of the board that they were looking for major changes in direction." Lionel Rolfe is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

MacArthur Foundation: An End to `Genius Awards' in Science?

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of