FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

April 10, 2003

Results of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation's seventy-ninth annual United States and Canadian competition have been announced by Foundation president Edward Hirsch. The year 2003 Fellowship winners include 184 artists, scholars, and scientists selected from over 3200 applicants for awards totaling $6,750,000. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisors and are approved by the Foundation's Board of Trustees, which includes eight members who are themselves past Fellows of the Foundation Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles A. Ryskamp, Jean Strouse, Wendy Wasserstein, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and Edward Hirsch.

Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. The new Fellows include writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers, choreographers, physical and biological scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities. Many of these individuals hold appointments in colleges and universities, with 89 institutions being represented by one or more Fellows. A number of those named have no academic affiliation.

Since 1925, according to Mr. Hirsch, the Foundation has granted more than $220 million in Fellowships to over 15,200 individuals. The Foundation's scores of advisory panels make recommendations to the Committee of Selection, whose members this year are Roger D. Abrahams, Hum Rosen Professor of Folklore and Folklife, University of Pennsylvania; Natalie Zemon Davis, Henry Charles Lea Professor of History Emeritus, Princeton University; Jack Miles, Senior Advisor to the President, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Peter H. Raven, Director, Missouri Botanical Garden and Engelmann Professor of Botany, Washington University; J. Robert Schrieffer, University Eminent Scholar Professor, the State of Florida University System; and committee chair Neil J. Smelser, former Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

In a time of decreased funding for individuals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, the Guggenheim Fellowship program has assumed a greatly increased importance and the Foundation is successfully raising funds to enable the appointment of a larger number of Fellows each year. Scores of Nobel Laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and eminent scientists appear on the roll of Fellows, which includes Ansel Adams, Aaron Copland, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Paul Samuelson, Martha Graham, Philip Roth, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.

The full list of year 2003 Fellows is on the world Wide Web at http://www.gf.org.