Several of Indian origin among 171 recipients of prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship

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Several individuals of Indian origin are among the 171 scientists, writers, scholars, and artists honored with generous grants across 48 fields by the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for this year.

On April 5, 2023, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of “exceptional individuals” chosen from 2,500 applicants after a rigorous peer review process. They were selected based on prior achievement and exceptional promise.

The amounts of grants to each honoree varies, “and the Foundation does not guarantee it will fully fund any project,” but it says it strives to be as equitable as possible in its allocations.

In all, 48 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 72 different academic institutions, 24 states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 31 to 85.

Based on their names, the following individuals of Indian origin were on the list of 2023 recipients:

Computer Science 

Anima Anandkumar, Bren Professor, California Institute of Technology  

Venkatesan Guruswami, Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley 

General Nonfiction

Abraham Verghese, Writer, Menlo Park, California; Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor, School of Medicine, Stanford University  

History of Science, Technology, & Economics 

Projit Bihari Mukharji, Professor, Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania; Visiting Faculty, History, Ashoka University 

Physics 

Prineha Narang, Professor and Howard Reiss Chair in Physical Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles 

South & Southeast Asian Studies 

Leela Prasad, Professor of Religious Studies, Duke University 

Created and initially funded in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the Foundation has sought to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.”

Since its establishment, the Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, and numerous other honors.