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Thanks to the grant, Critchfield is devoting far more time than he normally would to a study of a new and different subject, the village of Fessenden, N. Dak. (pop. 600), which happens to be his birthplace. Says Critchfeld: "There was one big, invisible string attached to the MacArthur prize: it was something you had to live up to." Translation: not having the time or the money will not do as an excuse to avoid work.
Biologist Michael Ghiselin: $212,000 in 1981. A specialist in evolutionary biology and author of the acclaimed The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (1969), Ghiselin had resigned from the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley to devote more time to writing and research even before receiving his award. Says he: "I sold my house and was living in draconian parsimony. This award gave me the resources for going places and doing research. I was upset by the award at first—it was hard to deal with after coping with adversity for so many years. But I have no complaints." Indeed, by saving a portion of each monthly stipend, Ghiselin says, "I'll be pretty much capable of surviving for the rest of my life."
Ghiselin has used some of the funds to travel to coral reefs in the Pacific, and to "fool around" in the Darwin archives at Cambridge University. In fact, Ghiselin decided to give Cambridge $5,000 to help preserve the archives, and he also donated $10,000 to the University of Utah, where he was a visiting scholar, for a series of lectures on evolution. Says Ghiselin: "I've become sort of a philanthropist myself. It allows me to share the wealth."
There have been no glittering breakthroughs or Nobel Prizes so far from the MacArthur fellows, but Roderick MacArthur, a director of the fund, is well satisfied with the way that his father's money is being spent: "Ten years from now, I would definitely expect that with at least one in 100 of these people you will be able to point to a real breakthrough, something they do that will make the world a little different. You're working on probability, not any kind of sure thing, but the bet is worthwhile."
—By Kenneth M. Pierce.
Reported by J. Madeleine Nash/Chicago, with other bureaus