Five Brown faculty members are among the 189 people awarded Guggenheim Fellowships this year, the most ever for the University in a single year.
The five recipients are Associate Professor of Mathematics Jeffrey Brock, Professor of Religious Studies Susan Harvey, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies Michael Satlow, Associate Professor of History Robert Self and Professor of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Michael Tarr.
The fact that Brown boasts so many winners this year is "an indication that there's a lot of terrific work being done here," Self said.
"It's just wonderful to have received it," Harvey said of the fellowship. "I'm astonished."
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has been awarding fellowships in its American and Canadian competition for 83 years. Fellowships are awarded to "scholars and artists" who conduct "research in any field of knowledge (or) creation in any of the arts," according to the foundation's Web site. Though typically the fellowship's recipients are affiliated with a university, the foundation also recognizes independent researchers and artists.
This year the foundation granted a total of $7.6 million in awards, with the amount granted varying for each individual recipient. The winners, selected from almost 2,800 applicants, were announced April 5. Among institutions, only Princeton University had more winners than Brown, with six professors receiving fellowships. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of Michigan and University of California, Los Angeles also each had five awardees.
Brock conducts research on low-dimensional geometry and topology, according to the University's Web site, and will work on a project titled "Models, Bounds and Effective Rigidity in Hyperbolic Geometry" with his Guggenheim award.
Brock likens his project to a genome project for three-dimensional spaces. "Every three-dimensional space has its own best geometry," he said.
During his fellowship, Brock will spend time at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in California, which he said has "great working conditions." After his fellowship, Brock plans to return to Brown, where he has been teaching since the fall of 2004.
Self, who has been teaching at Brown for three years, is a historian specializing in 20th-century U.S. history, political movements and culture. As a Guggenheim fellow, Self will work on a book called "The Politics of Gender and Sexuality in America from Watts to Reagan," which he said will explore subjects from "welfare to abortion to ... gay rights."
Harvey will work on a book called "Teaching Women: Biblical Women and Women's Choirs in Syriac Tradition." Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that Harvey said is "still a spoken language in the Middle East among Christians."
In her book, Harvey will examine how Syriac hymns "create entire lives for these Biblical characters" and portray women in "heroic terms," she said.
Harvey has been teaching at Brown for 20 years and specializes in late antique and Byzantine Christianity. Her fellowship will allow her to write her book more quickly than her last, she said, which took 14 years to complete.
Tarr is "trying to synthesize what we know about the neural basis of object recognition with recent computational approaches" in humans with his fellowship, he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Tarr will work with peers in applied mathematics, neuroscience and computer science to create a model of object recognition in a project called "Statistical Models of Structured Visual Object Recognition in Humans."
The record number of Guggenheim fellows from Brown "appears to be an indication that President (Ruth) Simmons' Plan for Academic Enrichment is bearing fruit," Tarr wrote. "The realization of this plan makes it an exciting time to be at Brown. ... Of course, it could also be random variation (one should always test one's theories!)."
Satlow will work on a project called "Jewish Piety in Late Antiquity" with his award. He will "investigate how the Jews of late antiquity understood their relationship with God," according to the University press release.
