Four With Chicago Ties Among MacArthur Grant Winners

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Professors at three Illinois universities and a playwright with ties to Chicago are among this year's winners of the MacArthur Foundation's so-called "genius grants."
　
This year's 21 MacArthur Fellows represent a diverse group, including scientists, poets, artists and lawyers.

Among them, Northwestern university nanomaterials expert Mark Hersam, Tami Bond, a U of I professor specializing in the global effects of soot and Tara Zahra, a University of Chicago historian who writes about 20th century Europe.

On the foundation's website, Zahra talks about getting the call that she'd been chosen. "It felt like being struck by lightning but a particularly good kind of lightning."
　
Also named: New York playwright Samuel D. Hunter.

He is one of the ensemble playwrights at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre and has a new play, "Rest," about to open there.

Each MacArthur Fellow gets a grant of $625,000, no strings attached