Press Release 2013 Fellows - United States and Canada
For Immediate Release:
April 11, 2013
2013 Fellows – United States and Canada
In its eighty-ninth annual competition for the United States and Canada, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and scientists. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants.
The great variety of backgrounds, fields of study, and accomplishments of Guggenheim Fellows is one of the most unique characteristics of the Fellowship program. In all, fifty-six disciplines, eighty-five different academic institutions, thirty states, and three Canadian provinces are represented by this year’s Fellows, who range in age from thirty to seventy-six. Thirty-five Fellows have no academic affiliation or hold adjunct or part-time positions at universities. As in past years, the Leon Levy Foundation is providing supplemental support for Fellows with no formal academic affiliation; the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation is underwriting the Fellowship in Constitutional Studies; and the estate of Carl Gans is helping to fund a Fellowship in Organismic Biology and Ecology, the field in which he himself won two Fellowships (1953, 1977).
Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation, is enthusiastic about the Fellows in the class of 2013: “It’s exciting to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows. These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has always bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue the tradition with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”
Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted over $306 million in Fellowships to more than 17,500 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, poets laureate, winners of Pulitzer Prizes, Fields Medals, and of other important, internationally recognized honors.
During this time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the opportunities created by the Guggenheim Fellowship program are increasingly important. New and continuing donations from friends, Trustees, former Fellows, and other foundations have ensured that the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation will be able to continue the mission Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim set for it: to “promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding and the appreciation of beauty, by aiding without distinction on account of race, color or creed, scholars, scientists and artists of either sex in the prosecution of their labors.”