A poet, a cartoonist, a labor organizer and a physicist working to understand the organization of the human brain are among the 21 people chosen as this year’s MacArthur Fellows, a distinction that bears the affectionate title “genius grant” and comes with a $625,000 cash prize.
The fellows, who did not know they were nominated for the award, were notified over the past two weeks that they’d won and were instructed to disclose the secret to no more than one person until the announcement was made public early Wednesday morning.