In December 1998, the James S. McDonnell Foundation announced the 10 recipients of its James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowships. The fellowships commemorate the 100th anniversary of James S. McDonnell as well as the 50th anniversary of his establishing the foundation that today carries his name. The fellowships awarded $1 million for each fellow’s research program. A key component of the Centennial Fellows competition was each candidate’s essay, intended for the general, educated reader, describing the planned research and explaining its significance. The winning essays are presented in this volume, updated and revised for publication following the April 9–10, 1999, Centennial Fellowship Symposium held at the National Academy of Sciences.

Although there were five fellowship categories, in this volume the essays are divided into four sections, reflecting how the fellows presented their work at the Centennial Fellows Symposium. As it turned out, the Centennial Fellowships in History and Philosophy of Science had an interest in genetics and cognition. Neurophilosopher Kathleen Akins’ work on color vision is placed, as was her presentation at the symposium, in the same section as the essays by the Human Cognition Centennial Fellows. Keith Wailoo, the Centennial Fellow in History of Science, studies diverse issues in medical science, including genetic disorders, and his presentation at the symposium and his essay in this book, accompany those of the Human Genetics Centennial Fellows.

From the earliest planning stages of the Centennial Fellowship Program, the foundation intended to publish a volume containing the 10 winning essays. After the conclusion of the symposium, many attendees en-

couraged us to include the insightful and thought-provoking summary remarks made by the four senior commentators, Patricia Churchland, David Wilkinson, David Schlessinger, and Murray Gell-Mann. There were also many requests to include the tribute to the late James S. McDonnell that was prepared and presented at the symposium by his son, John F. McDonnell. The details of “Mr. Mac’s” life and career provide a compelling rationale as to why the Centennial Fellowship Program chose to commemorate the past by investing in the future research efforts of 10 extraordinarily bright and articulate young scientists. Born in the last year of the nineteenth century, Mr. Mac’s ability to envision the future would make him a leader in the twentieth century ’s most remarkable technological achievements—air travel and space flight.

The Centennial Fellowship Program and the Centennial Fellowship Symposium required four years of planning and implementation. It owes its success to the dedicated efforts of many individuals. First, we thank those scientists who responded to the foundation’s call for applications. The academic community’s response to the Centennial Fellowship Program exceeded our expectations. It was gratifying to have such abundant evidence for our belief that there are many young investigators who are both outstanding scientists and gifted communicators. We are very grateful for the efforts of the members of the advisory panels, listed below, who thoughtfully read, reviewed, discussed, and agonized over the applications. They had a most difficult job, made all the harder by their unwavering dedication to the foundation’s goals.

Endel Tulving, Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre

Gordon Bower, Stanford University

Patricia Smith Churchland, University of California, San Diego

Max Coltheart, Macquarie University

Riitti Hari, Helsinki University of Technology

George Miller, Princeton University

Steve Petersen, Washington University School of Medicine

Steven Pinker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Posner, University of Oregon

Larry Weiskrantz, University of Oxford

David Schramm, University of Chicago (deceased)

Roger Blandford, California Institute of Technology

Marc Davis, University of California, Berkeley

Margaret Geller, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Richard McCray, University of Colorado

Sir Martin Rees, Cambridge University

Katsuhiko Sato, The University of Tokyo

Rashid Sunyaev, Russian Academy of Sciences and Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Edward van den Heuvel, University of Amsterdam

David Schlessinger, National Institute on Aging

Sir David Weatherall, University of Oxford

Jorge Allende, Universidad de Chile

Kay Davies, University of Oxford

Mary-Claire King, University of Washington

Jean-Louis Mandel, Institute of Genetic, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Ulf Petterson, University of Uppsala Biomedical Center

Janet Rowley, University of Chicago Medical Center

Yoshiyuki Sakaki, University of Tokyo

Huda Zoghbi, Baylor College of Medicine

Peter Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden

Partha Dasgupta, University of Cambridge

Gilberto Gallopin, Stockholm Environment Institute

Murray Gell-Mann, Sante Fe Institute

John Holland, University of Michigan

Crawford Holling, University of Florida

Robert Kates, College of the Atlantic

Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University

Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Berrien Moore III, University of New Hampshire

F. Sherwood Rowland, University of California, Irvine

Alvaro F. Umana, INCAE

Daniel Kevles, California Institute of Technology

Phillip Kitcher, University of California, San Diego

Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics

Loren Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon University

John Heilbron, University of California, Berkeley

David Malament, University of Chicago

Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State University

Dominique Pestre, Centre de Recherche en Histore des Sciences et des Techniques

Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The decision to administer the Centennial Fellowship Program using only the foundations’ existing staff meant additional work for already busy people. Kathy Leonard, Michael Lee, and Cheryl Washington cheerfully and ably shouldered the many tasks required for the foundation to run an efficient and successful international program. Alene Roth deserves special recognition for her untiring efforts on behalf of the program and for her professionalism in handling the myriad logistical details of the advisory board meetings and the Centennial Fellowship Symposium. Much gratitude is also owed Program Officer Melinda Bier for her invaluable assistance on every aspect of the program.

The Centennial Fellowship Symposium was cosponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, and we are grateful to the many individuals there who contributed to its success. We are grateful for the enthusiastic support provided by Academy President Bruce Alberts, Vice President Jack Halpern, and Executive Director Ken Fulton. Donna Gerardi, director of the Academy’s Office of Public Understanding of Science, went far beyond what the normal duties and responsibilities of her office required to help us with the Centennial Fellowship Program. From the earliest planning stages Donna “got” what the foundation was trying to accomplish and provided invaluable advice and guidance to the program. The success of the symposium is largely due to the help Donna and her staff provided.

The foundation also thanks Allison Ward and Dale Didion for assistance with public outreach. We are grateful for the interest and support of Stephen Mautner, of the Joseph Henry Press, for his enthusiastic assistance with this book.

S. M. Fitzpatrick

J. T. Bruer

On June 10, 1995, the James S. McDonnell Foundation Board of Directors first discussed what the foundation might do to commemorate the centennial of James S. McDonnell’s birth, in 1999, and the 50th anniversary of his establishing the foundation, in 2000. In that initial discussion, the board decided that any planned centennial program would have to look, and contribute, to the future, not merely commemorate the past.

The specific idea for a Centennial Fellowship Program arose a few months later during a visit by John Bruer, the foundation’s president, and Susan Fitzpatrick, the program director, to Oxford University. They had spent the morning meeting with several of the outstanding young scientists that the foundation was supporting at Oxford. During a cab ride from St. John’s College to the River Meade Rehabilitation Hospital, an idea began to take shape: An international competition to provide generous and flexible research support to young scientists would be an ideal, future-directed centennial activity. The foundation could award centennial fellowships in research areas that had been of special interest to Mr. McDonnell. In accordance with the board ’s wishes, and in recognition of Mr. McDonnell’s reputation for forward-thinking, the fellows would be chosen not only on the basis of their scientific accomplishments, but also on the basis of the potential impact of their work for twenty-first century science. In addition, it was decided that the fellows would be articulate young people, dedicated to communicating both the importance of their research and the excitement of science to a broad public. To emphasize the importance of this criterion, the application process would not ask for a traditional research proposal; rather, it would require an essay that is

accessible to a broad, science-interested audience that explained the fellows’ research and its importance for society’s future. The fellows would be selected then, in part, for their scientific promise and in part for their willingness to articulate how science and technology are central to addressing and solving social and human problems, now and in the future.

After some refinement of these ideas, the Board of Directors approved the Centennial Fellowship Program in fall 1995. Four years of intense preparation and deliberation followed. Finally, on April 9–10, 1999, on the centennial of James S. McDonnell’s birth, in the gracious halls of the National Academy of Sciences, the 10 James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellows presented their work in a series of public symposia.

Selecting 10 fellows from among the hundreds that applied was a demanding task. It required months of reading and weeks of discussion among foundation staff and its advisors. However, our advisors took on the task in good humor and with an optimistic outlook. Most importantly, however, throughout the entire process the advisors took the time and effort to educate us about their various fields. They helped us to see the important and interesting problems that a private foundation could address. This learning process provided by our advisors reinforced the belief at the McDonnell Foundation that there are numerous opportunities where targeted and timely private foundation funding can make meaningful contributions to the advancement of science. Thus, one message we hope the Centennial Fellowship Program will articulate is that private foundations have a significant role in funding science and scholarship.

Organized American philanthropy is also celebrating its centennial. During its first 50 years, American foundations were prominent in the support of science, as is evident to anyone familiar with the histories of, for example, the Rockefeller and the Carnegie foundations. However, following World War II, with greater federal involvement in funding the national research effort, foundations began to look for other ways to invest their resources, resources that were now dwarfed by the federal commitment. Since the 1960s, many foundations have pursued policy-directed work and direct-action programs, with beneficial and commendable results. But, in a time of expanding wealth and of the imminent intergenerational transfer of that wealth with its enormous philanthropic potential, we should not forget that the original vocation of American-organized philanthropy was to invest in generating new knowledge that could be used to solve social problems. This vocation was at the core of James S. McDonnell’s philanthropic vision. It was captured best in a remark he made in his 1963 commencement address to graduates of Washington University: “As man recognizes his responsibilities and moves ahead to carve his own destiny, there will be many problems to solve.”

We have used this remark as the guiding theme for the Centennial Fellowship Program. James S. McDonnell believed that science and scholarship gave mankind the power to shape the future and the obligation to shape that future in a responsible manner, to the benefit of all. The fellows’ research, as described in the chapters presented in this volume, exemplifies his ideal.

John F. McDonnell

James S. McDonnell often referred to himself as a plodder (namely, a person who works slowly, steadily, and unimaginatively). He did everything in life with meticulous attention to detail, to the point that it could be excruciatingly, maddeningly exasperating to those around him; but he also inspired those same people with a sense of important mission and high purpose. He had a unique ability to synthesize the details and see the whole picture and future evolution with an uncanny accuracy. And he had an insatiable, searching curiosity that enveloped everything about human existence from genetics and evolution through the interrelationship of the mind and brain, from the complexity and interconnectedness of everything on our spaceship Earth (his term) through the vastness of the cosmos, encompassing the fundamental philosophical questions of science and human existence. In this tribute I hope to provide some feel for the breadth and scope of the man who made the McDonnell Centennial Fellowships possible and how enthusiastic and knowledgeable he was about the fields of discovery that are presented in this volume: human cognition, astrophysics and cosmology, human genetics, and global systems.

Mr. Mac, as he was widely and affectionately known to his colleagues around the world, was born 100 years ago, four years before the Wright brothers achieved powered flight. His father, a graduate of the University of Alabama, had migrated to Arkansas in 1881 with $3,000 of borrowed capital and successfully established a general store in the small town of Altheimer. His father believed that his children should have a good education and should learn the hard facts of business as early in life as pos-

sible. As a result, Mr. Mac had jobs throughout his upbringing and throughout his college years. In one instance, as a teenager delivering newspapers in a lightning storm, the pony he was riding was electrocuted. But in the process of falling dead, his pony threw him far enough away that he was unharmed. Mr. Mac’s mother was a deeply devout Southern Methodist and a stern disciplinarian. The story is told that Mrs. McDonnell once took her seven-year-old son to an evangelist and proudly announced, “My son, James, is dedicated to the ministry.” It was a secret she had not previously shared with James. Despite that effort by his mother, Mr. Mac’s propensities for science and engineering showed up early in his life, as he filled the upper floor of his family’s house with wireless telegraphy equipment. Another family story is that one time when a minister came to visit, young James held onto a wire attached to a battery and capacitor behind his back so that when the minister reached out to shake his hand, a giant blue spark jumped the gap, startling the minister and mortifying his mother. Lost in the mists of time is what punishment his mother meted out to young James afterward.

One memorable experience during his childhood was when his mother took the family to the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. They lived in an inn on the fairgrounds for a full month, and Mr. Mac saw the exposition from corner to corner. This must have helped instill in him his later wide-ranging curiosity. Fifty-five years afterward he reminisced that “the only thing I missed at the fair was the prizefight that my two older brothers sneaked off to one night without taking me. I was mad at them at the time, but I did not mind missing the licking which Mother gave them.”

Mr. Mac headed off to his freshman year at Princeton in 1917, where he experienced a growing interest in aviation. His father had constantly urged all of his sons to become professional men, or at least to enter a business that had dignity and potential, unlike aviation. Mr. Mac’s two older brothers followed their father’s advice. One became a successful architect, the other an eminent banker. Mr. Mac, however, would strike off into the “wild blue yonder” of the fledgling and uncertain world of aviation, in which airplanes were made of wood, cloth, and bailing wire, and pilots took their lives into their hands each time they climbed into the open cockpit. At Princeton Mr. Mac majored in physics; there was no aeronautical engineering department. New horizons opened up for him when he was introduced to the “Life History of Stars” in an astronomy course taught by Henry Norris Russell. In a philosophy course he wrote a major paper about an experiment conducted the previous summer by a British team led by Sir Arthur Eddington to measure the deflection of starlight by the Sun during a solar eclipse, which was the first experimental confirmation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Also, at the end of his sophomore year he wrote a 32-page manuscript to himself about

the mysteries of human existence. He concluded with a note: “I realize that the whole of this is very loosely reasoned. It is meant as simply a sketch, not a philosophical argument. I have written it as an experiment, without reading any philosophy except that required in the sophomore course, to see how the ideas I had in mind compared with those of the philosophers. This comparison is yet to be made. ” It is unclear whether he ever completed the comparison, but he did continue to ponder those subjects throughout his life. While living in Chicago and working for Western Electric during the summer after his sophomore year, he spent every spare moment in the library reading the works of William James and Frederic W. H. Myers’ book, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. He became convinced that all mental and physical activity, including the so-called paranormal phenomena, had their basis in the performance of the underlying neuronal systems.

After graduating from Princeton with honors in 1921, he entered the only graduate aeronautical engineering program in the country, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as one of only three civilians admitted because the program was organized primarily for Army and Navy officers. Masters degree in hand, he was accepted as an aviation cadet with a commission as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army Air Service Reserve in September 1923. He was one of only six ROTC graduates from across the country that the Army Air Service had enough money to accept for active duty that year.

The next four months he spent in flight training at Brooks Field in San Antonio, Texas. He had a glorious time imitating Jonathan Livings ton Seagull, flying the World War I Curtiss Jennys only a few feet over the mesquite, looping, zooming, and trying out all the capabilities of flying.

He also was one of six volunteers who tested the new device known as a parachute. To perform the test he lay on the wing of an airplane as it took off and climbed to altitude. Then on a signal from the pilot he was supposed to let go. On his first try he could not unclench his fingers. Afterward, in his usual analytical style, he marveled at the fact that he could not command his fingers to let go. In any case, on the second try, after the cadet on the other wing had successfully let loose, Mr. Mac let go and found “such quiet, and mental isolation as never experienced on Earth—ecstasy.”

While others in his flight class went on to become the leaders of the U.S. Air Force after World War II, 2nd Lieutenant James S. McDonnell wanted to design and build aircraft. So he separated from the Army Air Service and (quoting from a 1973 speech of his), “after finding out he couldn’t make a living at it in his native state of Arkansas, he went up amongst the damn Yankees where most of the tiny aircraft plants were, and made out as best he could.”

For most of the next 15 years he worked at a series of aircraft companies, including Hamilton, Ford, and Martin. At one point he decided to strike out on his own with two other engineers to design and build what would now be called a short-takeoff and -landing airplane. It was all metal, low wing, and could land on rough fields in about 20 feet. Before it was even built, he entered it in the Guggenheim Safe Airplane Competition for a $100,000 prize. Airplanes from around the world competed. To make a long story short, he flew it cross-country to the competition after only one test flight, arriving just ahead of the qualification deadline. On the first day, the Doodle-Bug, as he called it, performed spectacularly; but on the second day the tail broke and Mr. Mac had to crash land it. Although he was among the five finalists, he could not get it repaired in time to continue in the competition.

He did not give up, however. For the next two years he barnstormed around the country, trying to get financial backing to produce the Doodle-Bug as the family flivver of the sky.

In an application for employment as a transport pilot in 1933, he wrote: “. . . in order to test the feasibility for general private flying of the ‘Doodle-Bug,’ a new type monoplane with slats and flaps, I flew it some 27,000 miles in 1929-1930 between the Atlantic and Rocky Mountains and Toronto and Miami, under all such conditions as might be unwittingly encountered by amateurs: a snow storm, a sleet storm, rainstorms, . . ., night flying, landing in open country without landing lights or landing flares on a dark 100% overcast night, several flights with a cloud ceiling of 200 feet cross country, and one flight with a 50 foot cloud ceiling down a double track railroad, terminated by landing in a visibility of 200 yards; . . . and landings and take-offs on private lawns and on practice fairways of golf courses.”

Unfortunately, it was the early 1930s, and the country was in a deep depression. By the end of 1931 he was out of money and went back to work as an engineer while waiting for the opportunity to start his company.

Throughout this period he continued to search for greater meaning. In 1935 he wrote: “What I desire is to find some activity to which I can devote all of myself and which will lift me out of my small self and enable me to serve the creative evolution of life on earth as a whole.”

But he recognized that to achieve that end he had to have financial independence. So he consciously rededicated himself to aviation as his full-time occupation, more convinced than ever that he must start his own company. Furthermore, he wanted to build commercial transport aircraft because “. . . swift transport is conducive to world travel and trade and therefore conducive to the gradual welding of the peoples of the earth into a more friendly and more harmonious and purposeful community.”

He further wrote in 1935: “I feel that a world of flying people will be a world of better people. ” We may not be better people today, but he was certainly right that the airplane has been instrumental in the globalization of trade and in making those who do travel more broad-minded in their thinking and actions.

His chance to start his own company finally came in the late 1930s, but it was based on a coming war, not on economic growth and prosperity. He left the Glenn L. Martin Company in late 1938, and after an intense eight months of fundraising and preparation, at age 40 he founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 6, 1939, to build military aircraft. In his usual methodical manner he had picked St. Louis, where he had never previously lived. Because the coming war could make both coasts vulnerable, he wanted a location in the middle of the country. Also, he wanted a good aviation labor market, which St. Louis had. And most important, he was able to attract a considerable number of investors in St. Louis because it had an aviation history, including the financing of Lindbergh’s famous flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

During the first year sales were zero, losses were $3,892, shareholders ’ equity was $218,498, and the company employed about 50 people. Forty years later when he died, annual sales were $6 billion, net earnings were $145 million, dividends paid were $34 million, firm backlog was $8.8 billion, shareholders’ equity was $1.5 billion, and the company employed 82,550 people. Furthermore, McDonnell Douglas was the second largest maker of commercial transport aircraft, second in defense contracts, 4th largest U.S. exporter, and 54th largest U.S. industrial corporation. With he and his family owning about 20 percent of the stock, he had certainly achieved his goal of financial independence.

In fact, as soon as the company became successful, he began to expand his personal horizons and to become deeply involved both personally and financially in his lifelong interests outside of building aircraft.

Astronautics and the cosmos are areas that combined both business and pleasure for him. In the mid-1940s he became close friends with nuclear physicist and Nobel Laureate Arthur Holly Compton, who had just become the chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. He sought out other scientists such as James A. Van Allen, after whom the radiation belts surrounding Earth were named.

He could hardly contain his excitement when McDonnell Aircraft won the contract to design and build the first U.S. manned spacecraft, Mercury, in 1959. He loved interacting with the astronauts and attending the launches.

Although he was not comfortable making public speeches, whenever he did, he meticulously prepared them word by carefully chosen word. Usually they were about space. In 1957 in an address to the graduating

class of the University of Missouri engineering school, he declared: “So Fellow Pilgrims, welcome to the wondrous Age of Astronautics. May serendipity be yours in the years to come as Man steps on the Earth as a footstool, and reaches to the Moon, the planets, and the stars.”

Mr. Mac put his money where his interests were. In 1963 the city of St. Louis ran out of funding to complete the construction and outfitting of a new planetarium. Mr. Mac donated the necessary funds. In 1963 he funded a Professorship in Space Sciences at Washington University, and in 1975 made a major gift to establish a center for space sciences.

In fact, as early as 1950, he incorporated a private charitable foundation, the McDonnell Foundation (now the James S. McDonnell Foundation), and contributed $500,000 of McDonnell Aircraft stock to it. Adding later contributions and the tremendous increase of McDonnell Aircraft stock value, the foundation’s assets have grown to over $300 million today despite $225 million of grants it has awarded during its 49-year history. The Centennial Fellowship Program is only the latest undertaking of the foundation to carry on Mr. Mac’s legacy of research and philanthropy.

From 1963 to 1966 Mr. Mac served as chairman of Washington University ’s Board of Trustees. He used the opportunity to meet with many faculty members and probe with his usual thoroughness into their research. In this way he continued to educate himself in many fields of endeavor.

In the area of genetics he was greatly intrigued and excited when the molecular structure of DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick in the 1950s. He meticulously probed the scientists at Washington University to learn all he could. In 1966 he provided funds for construction of a new medical sciences building, and, looking to the future, he instructed that two extra floors (not needed at the time) be built. He then endowed a new Department of Genetics (to be housed in the extra space), and at the dedication of the building he lectured the audience on the importance of the study of genes for the future well-being of humanity.

In the area of global and complex systems he had two complementary, but seemingly contradictory, interests. He was a great supporter of both NATO, a military alliance, and the United Nations, a global institution to preserve peace. In a 1967 speech he reminded his audience: “As I have said many times, the waging of peace must be achieved from a foundation of great strength. Our mission at McDonnell Aircraft is to contribute to the building and maintaining of that strength. ” NATO represented the foundation of strength, and the United Nations represented “Man’s most noble effort to achieve international peace.” As a result, he was actively involved in both organizations and headed the U.S. organization to support the United Nations.

Again, he put his money where his interests were. McDonnell Douglas was the only organization in the world where all employees had paid holidays each year on both NATO Day (April 4) and U.N. Day (October 24).

In 1965 he authored an article titled “Only The United Nations Can” in which he wrote: “The destiny of our Planet, the development of its human and material resources, the spread of scientific knowledge, the population-explosion and the evolving world community—these are the subjects which should make up the continuing dialog between heads of Governments. . . . ” He closed the article with the words: “If the United Nations is to fulfill the hopes of all men, the parochial concerns of the moment must be subdued in favor of the long-term universal concerns that ultimately will determine Humanity’s future. ”

Surely the interactions between humans is the most complex system of all. Science and human responsibility was for Mr. Mac another very important theme. In 1957 he funded and participated in a major international meeting on the subject at Washington University. The objective was to examine “How the rapid technological changes in modern life can best be channeled to yield the highest human gains. ” He returned to the science and human responsibility theme many times in his life, including a 1973 speech of the same title in which he stated “. . . it is only during the past few decades that Man has achieved the science and technology whereby he can either ruin himself and all life on Earth, or he can consciously and responsibly try to help lead all life on Earth further along the path of creative evolution.” One of Mr. Mac’s favorite artistic depictions of this philosophy was a statue by sculptor Albin Polasek, titled “Man Carving Out His Own Destiny.” Mr. Mac kept a replica of the statue in his study at home, and he even had it printed on the McDonnell Douglas stock certificates. It symbolizes Mr. Mac’s belief that humanity has the ability to carve out its own destiny—for better or for worse.

In the area of human cognition, Mr. Mac had a lifelong fascination with the workings of the brain and the mind. When he learned of the new positron emission tomography, developed by a team at Washington University, he immediately convened a meeting of Washington University ’s top researchers to discuss how neuronal activity underlies mental activity and behavior. He challenged the group to prepare a truly innovative research proposal for consideration by the McDonnell Foundation. By the time the proposal was presented in May 1980, Mr. Mac had already suffered the first of a series of strokes from which he died in August of that year. However, he rallied his faculties to further improve the proposal and made a $5 million grant to endow the Center for the Study of Higher Brain Function, which was one of his last acts before passing on to the next phase of existence (as he characteristically referred to death).

I know that Mr. Mac would be tremendously excited by the research projects that are presented in this volume. The recipients of the McDonnell Centennial Fellowships are very fortunate to be involved in research that to paraphrase Mr. Mac’s words, “will lift you out of your small self and enable you to serve the creative evolution of life on earth as a whole.” Also, with the $1 million grant from the foundation, each fellow will have the financial independence that Mr. Mac believed is so important for maximum creativity.

In closing, I believe that what expressed Mr. Mac’s philosophy and approach to life most succinctly and elegantly is a prayer he created and painstakingly improved throughout his lifetime. “Universal Creative Spirit—We thank you for the gift of conscious life on Earth with the opportunity to explore, create, develop, and grow in spirit and the opportunity to nurture all living things and take charge of the creative evolution of same. Hallelujah!”