This is the amount of cash you would have won if you had received a (no-strings-attached!) “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. (Yesterday, the MacArthur Foundation named this year’s Genius Grant winners, including a writer (Donald Antrum), an economist (Colin Camerer), a doctor (Jeffrey Brenner), and a lawyer (Margaret Stock), among many others. There are 24 winners or “MacArthur Fellows” in all this year.)

The annual Genius Grants–or more formally  MacArthur Fellowships–are one of the most prestigious private awards in the world, and according to the MacArthur Foundation’s website, “the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.” The current prize is $625,000 (paid over five years in quarterly installments), and as of 2007, MacArthur Foundation has awarded more than $350 million in Genius Grants to 756 recipients as young as 18 and as old as 82.

Do geniuses need subsidies? Are you a creative genius in your domain? If so, what problem or research question would you work on if you had won a MacArthur Genius Grant? (*)

(*) For our part, prior probability would continue our Quixotic quest for an alternative model of legal adjudication, building on our previous work  on the Turing Test.

Bonus link: see also MacArthur ‘genius grant’ myths debunked