Roland Fryer is recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award
September 20, 2011
Roland Fryer (PhD Bus 2002), professor of economics, Harvard University, is named as a recipient of the 2011 MacArthur Foundation Genius Award. MacArthur Fellows each receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached support over a five year period. The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.
Fryer is an economist illuminating the causes and consequences of economic disparity due to race and inequality in American society. Through innovative empirical and theoretical investigations, Fryer has opened up a range of topics to quantitative analysis, offering new insights on such issues as the cognitive underpinnings of racial discrimination, labor market inequalities, and, in particular, the educational trajectory of minority children. In January 2008, at age 30, he became the youngest African American to receive tenure at Harvard University. He has been the recipient of a number of honors, including a Sloan Fellowship, the Calvó-Armengol International Prize, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2009.
Source: The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Photo courtesy of The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
