The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in New York City has announced its 2017 class of fellows. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were selected from a group of nearly three thousand applicants.

A hundred and seventy-three fellowships were awarded to scholars, artists, and scientists representing forty-nine disciplines and artistic fields and sixty-four academic institutions; sixty-eight fellows have no academic affiliation or hold an adjunct or part-time position at a university. Hailing from twenty-seven states, the District of Columbia, and three Canadian provinces, this year's fellows range in age from twenty-seven to seventy-nine. The Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation is once again underwriting the Fellowship in Constitutional Studies.

This year's fellows include astrophysicist Eric Agol; filmmaker, artist, and animator Signe Baumane; writers Kevin Davies and Deborah Rudacille; intellectual historian Margaret Cohen; composer Oscar Bettison; sculptor, photographer, and performance artist Lesley Dill; journalist and author Masha Gessen; linguist Brian Gick; poet Matthea Harvey; law professor and author Heidi Kitrosser; cultural historian Cheryl Misak; and education scholar and author Natasha Warikoo.

"It's exciting to name a hundred and seventy-three new Guggenheim Fellows," said Guggenheim Foundation president Edward Hirsch. "These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Each year since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has bet everything on the individual, and we're thrilled to continue to do so with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It's an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do."

For a complete list of the 2017 Guggenheim Fellows, see the Guggenheim Foundation website.