he MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity; promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.

In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, activists, or workers in other fields, with or without institu-tional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in interdisciplinary work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.

Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years. The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” sti-pend in support of people, not projects.

There are no restrictions on becoming a Fellow, except that nominees must be either residents or citizens of the United States. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations.

For additional information about MacArthur programs and grantmaking guidelines, see the Foundation’s website.

MacArthur Fellows Program
Grants Authorized 2005