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Forwarded-For: ehrlich@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich)  ]

The following is from the July 27, 1990 issue of Science section entitled
Briefings:

Free Software "Genius" Honored

Each year the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation suprises
around 30 individuals with 5-year "genius" grants of $150,000 to
$375,000.  Most go to recognized talents in science, public policy,
and the arts, but the foundation likes to include the occasional
offbeat character.

This year's oddball choice is Richard Stallman 37, a Cambridge,
Massachusetts programmer best known for writing a flexible and
extremely popular text editor known as GNU Emacs - a program he gives
away free to anyone who asks.

To Stallman, the success of GNU Emacs is just the first step toward
achieving a much larger goal: the elimination of restrictions on the
copying and redistribution of software.  Five years ago, Stallman
founded the Free Software Foundation, which is building GNU, a free
alternative to the popular UNIX computer-operating system.  There's
no telling when GNU might be complete, although many pieces of the
system are already available.

Up to now, Stallman has been leading a monastic existence, living and
working in an office donated by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.  "Since I haven't had to
spend much time making a living", he says, "I haven't thought about
what I'll do" with the $240,000 award.  He may do some traveling and
learn some "non-computer related skills" - like cooking and swimming.

This year's other scientist awardees are John C. Blair III, professor
of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University; Stanford
biologist Paul Ehrlich; Harvard astronomer Margaret J. Geller; Harvard
mathematician David Kazhdanl; biologist M. A. R. Koehl of the
University of California at Berkeley; Boston University mathematician
Nancy Kopell; ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan of the Desert Botanical
Garden in Phoenix; University of Michigan anthropologist Sherry P.
Ortner; and anthropologist Eric Wolf of the City University of New
York.



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Dan Ehrlich <ehrlich@cs.psu.edu>/Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176