Macarthur Foundation

National Public Radio is being awarded the largest grant in its history, $14 million, as part of $42 million in gifts announced today by the philanthropic John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In its announcement, the foundation lauded NPR as "a reliable source of objective information and thoughtful analysis." The NPR Endowment will get $4 million immediately, and the network's operating budget will receive the remaining $10 million over 10 years.

UCLA neurobiologist Elissa Hallem has won a prestigious MacArthur fellowship for her work studying a topic you've almost definitely never considered unless you work in her lab: how worms smell stuff. Strange as it may sound, Hallem's work has the potential to reduce the devastating health effect of parasitic worms around the world -- and to improve our still-thin understanding of how all animals smell. Hallem and 22 other winners from the arts and sciences will each receive "genius grants" of $100,000 a year for five years.

John Corbally, 79, the first president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, known for its "genius grants," and former president of the University of Illinois and Syracuse University, died Friday of brain cancer at his home in Mill Creek, Wash. Corbally was credited with shaping the philanthropy of the richly endowed foundation established by billionaire John D. MacArthur, sole owner of Bankers Life and Casualty Co. of Chicago, who died in 1978.

Kevin Guskiewicz, one of the winners of the MacArthur Foundation award announced Tuesday, was long a thorn in the side of the National Football League. Since 1999, he has wired the helmets of about 700 college football players with accelerometers to study what kinds of hits result in concussions , which kinds of players get them, and what the long-term consequences of those brain injuries can be. He was among the first to find a strong link between multiple concussions and later dementia, depression and memory and intellectual deficits that often lead to Alzheimer's disease.

A juggler and a wildlife illustrator are among the 36 recipients of this year's MacArthur fellowships, grants of up to $375,000 that winners may spend as they choose. Several poets, literary critics and academicians, including Stanford University population studies professor Paul Ehrlich, are among this year's winners, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced Monday. Three other Californians were among the grant recipients. They are: M. A. R.

Max Roach, the jazz Hall-of-Famer who will be scoring an as-yet-unannounced work at the San Diego Repertory Theatre next summer, just received a MacArthur grant for $372,000. The award, which has been nicknamed "the genius grant," was created by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation eight years ago to give talented people the financial freedom to develop their potential in any way they wish.

Long before Luis Alfaro was officially proclaimed a genius, he was a 17-year-old kid from the Pico-Union district who wandered into the offices of the Inner City Cultural Center in search of a job. At the small community theater west of downtown, he earned his first "paycheck" as an artist: $5 from the cash box for his solo play, "True Stories From the Corner of Pico and Union."

A UC Riverside biologist who studies spider silk to make natural product-based materials such as biodegradable fishing lines and sutures is among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur "genius" awards. A Caltech scientist trying to understand how interactions between proteins and genes control the activity of cells, and another who folds DNA into complex shapes that could eventually be used in electronic circuits were also among the six California scientists who received the awards.

Two Stanford University professors and two UC scholars--including an evolutionary biologist who has been blind since childhood--are among this year's 33 winners of the MacArthur Foundation's eclectic and coveted "genius" awards, officials announced Monday.

Two organizations here, North Lawndale Employment Network and Chicago Rehab Network, are among nine winners in this country and abroad of a new award for small nonprofits from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Creative and Effective Institutions Awards range from $250,000 to $500,000. The winners have annual budgets of $2.5 million or less, and, though small, they are considered comers in their fields.

A UC San Francisco neurologist working to crack the mysteries of early-onset dementia and a Marin County poet known for her spare, often witty verses are among the 22 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants. Each winner will receive $500,000 over the next five years to use however they choose. Established in 1981, the prestigious prizes recognize originality and the potential for important future work in a wide array of sciences, arts and social activism. Among this year's other MacArthur recipients are a New Jersey silversmith who restores medieval treasures, a Massachusetts psychologist working to lower suicide rates and a North Carolina researcher who has made key advances in the diagnosis and treatment of sports-related concussions.

Eight Californians, including a public high school physics teacher, a deaf sign-language expert, a jellyfish researcher and an installation artist, are among 23 winners of this year's grants from the MacArthur Foundation. The recipients will each receive $500,000 over the next five years, with no strings attached. Included on this year's list are a few celebrated names, such as David Simon, the Baltimore-based screenwriter of "The Wire," the 2002-08 television series about the urban drug trade, and Annette Gordon-Reed, the Harvard law professor who has written about Thomas Jefferson's relationship with a slave.

A Los Angeles artist who specializes in incorporating found objects into his pieces and a USC law professor whose own battle with schizophrenia has informed her advocacy for those suffering from mental illness are among the 24 winners of this year's "genius" grants from the MacArthur Foundation. Mark Bradford, Elyn Saks and 22 other winners will each receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend any way they please. For Bradford, 47, the MacArthur award is the third major prize he has received in the last three years.

Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, the master Indian musician and composer who was a pivotal figure in introducing the music of his homeland to the West, has died. He was 87. The legendary sarod player and teacher died of kidney failure Thursday night at his home in the Bay Area city of San Anselmo, according to an announcement on the website of the Ali Akbar College of Music, Khan's teaching facility in northern California.

At New York's Jazz Gallery in December, Puerto Rican-born saxophonist Miguel Zenon had a roomful of normally laid-back hard-core jazz fans standing up and stomping. They were grooving to "Despedida," a rustic folk song about a Christmas party in Zenon's hometown of San Juan, which he sang with a trio of pleneros, percussion-playing troubadours who accompanied his regular jazz quartet.

A UC Riverside biologist who studies spider silk to make natural product-based materials such as biodegradable fishing lines and sutures is among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur "genius" awards. A Caltech scientist trying to understand how interactions between proteins and genes control the activity of cells, and another who folds DNA into complex shapes that could eventually be used in electronic circuits were also among the six California scientists who received the awards.

A San Diego archeologist who studies the origins of civilization, a Sebastopol, Calif., sculptor whose works fuse the worlds of science and art, and a Santa Fe, N.M., blacksmith who handles hot metal with lyrical skill are among the 24 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants.

"I do not think of blindness as an advantage," the professor was saying the other day, in all seriousness. But neither was Geerat Vermeij, the blind professor, speculating on possible reasons why he was chosen recently for a $280,000 grant to use as he pleases, no strings attached. There is no reason to suspect the award was for anything other than solid scientific accomplishment. That and the safe bet that with financial distractions removed, further meritorious research would result.

A UCLA mathematician sometimes called the "Mozart of Math," a Stanford University aviation engineer using abstract mathematical principles to help prevent airborne collisions, a San Francisco entrepreneur developing affordable drugs for neglected diseases in Third World countries and a Palo Alto engineer helping the blind read are among the 25 winners of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants. Each winner will receive $500,000 over five years to use as they see fit.