Today’s mail brought a handsome book from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. MacArthur Fellows: the First 25 Years, 1981-2005 provides brief biographies of all 700+ extraordinary individuals who have been named MacArthur Fellows. That’s their official name; popularly these are the famous “genius awards.” Indexes list the fellows by class and by field of endeavor. Librarianship doesn’t appear. So I checked the biographies of the 20 fellows listed under “education.” No librarian among them.

Will 2006 be the year that a librarian is named a MacArthur Fellow? If you were on of the nominators, who in our field would you nominate?