DOUG JOHNSON: Welcome to American Mosaic in VOA Special English.
(MUSIC)
I’m Doug Johnson.
Today, we report on this year’s MacArthur Fellowship winners ...
Answer a question about a huge and beautiful park in the nation’s capital ...
And play music from jazz pianist Vijay Iyer.
(MUSIC)
2010 MacArthur Fellows
DOUG JOHNSON: Receiving a telephone call from the MacArthur Foundation can lead to a big surprise. This week, the Chicago-based organization told twenty-three people that they had received a MacArthur Fellowship. Winners of this yearly honor receive five hundred thousand dollars with no conditions. The MacArthur Foundation says the program honors explorers and risk-takers doing interesting and inventive work. Mario Ritter tells us more.
MARIO RITTER: This year’s winners include scientists, artists, historians and language experts. Two MacArthur fellows pay special attention to letters. Matthew Carter is a type designer who creates letterforms for printed texts as well as computer screens.
He thinks about the way a letter’s design can be useful and also look good.
Nicholas Benson is a skilled stone carver. Much stone carving of letters is done by machines today. But Mr. Benson’s artistry can be seen on buildings around the United States.
The youngest MacArthur fellow is thirty-year-old John Dabiri. He is a biophysicist who studies the special movement of jellyfish. His research is helping scientists understand evolution as well as the physics of fluids.
Entomologist Marla Spivak studies small creatures. Her work with bees is helping to protect these important insects.
Language is very important to both Jessie Little Doe Baird and Carol Padden. Ms. Baird has helped to bring back the language of the Wampanoag Indian tribe of Massachusetts. She has started a dictionary and an educational program to revive this language among her tribe members.
Carol Padden is a linguist who studies the organization and evolution of sign language. She has studied the social meaning of American Sign Language as well as the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language in Israel. She is the first deaf person to be named a MacArthur fellow.
Three fellows are interested in telling stories. David Cromer is a Broadway theater director who is presenting well-known twentieth century American plays in new and inventive ways.
David Simon is a television writer and producer whose programs explore the complex realities of city life. He is best known for his work on the shows "The Wire" and "Treme."
The writer Yiyun Li tells stories that take place in the United States and China. Her novel "The Vagrants" tells about life in a small Chinese town during the period after the death of ruler Mao Zedong in the nineteen seventies.