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37 Under 36

America's young innovators in the arts and sciences

Meet the Innovators

Water Works

Taking up the family business, Philippe Cousteau campaigns to save our oceans and rivers

Roving Eye

Documentary filmmaker Rachel Grady opens our eyes to the complexities of overlooked places and people

Midas Touch

To clean highly polluted groundwater, Michael Wong has developed a detergent based on gold

Hot Idea

Christina Galitsky's energy-efficient cookstove makes life a little easier for Darfur's refugees

High Scorer

Composer Nico Muhly wowed them at Carnegie Hall and the New York Public Library

Painting the Edge

With an eye for despoiled landscapes, Lisa Sanditz captures the sublime

Stepping Up

Even as he travels the world, dancer and hip-hopper Marc Bamuthi Joseph has stayed close to his musical roots

Shell Fame

Paleobiologist Aaron O'Dea has made his name by sweating the small stuff

Flower Power

Studying ancient botanical drawings, Daniela Bleichmar is rewriting the history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas

Mounds vs. Vegans

In drawings and paintings, Trenton Doyle Hancock pits archetypes against each other

How to Make a Dodo

Biologist Beth Shapiro has figured out a recipe for success in the field of ancient DNA research

Site Seer

Faced with the Internet's overwhelming clutter, Joshua Schachter invented a deceptively simple tool that helps us all cut to the chase

Russian Idol

Moscow-born Regina Spektor draws on classical music roots to create and perform pop songs of rare originality

Flu Fighter

With a possible pandemic in our future, immunologist John Wherry is racing to develop a once-a-lifetime vaccine

Show Stopper

The classically trained dance star Alicia Graf showed true grit overcoming a career-threatening ailment

Dogged

Primatologist Brian Hare investigates the social behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos in Africa. But dogs and foxes showed him the way

Chameleon

Playwright and performer Sarah Jones displays a genius for climbing into other people's skin

The Big Picture

Political historian Jeremi Suri has come up with a new way of looking at the links between the low and the mighty

Mighty Mouth

Spoken-word artist Mayda del Valle brings to life "democracy writ large in poetry"

The Player

Luis von Ahn's secret for making computers smarter? Get thousands of people to take part in his cunning online games

Signs of Life

Astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger analyzes light from distant stars for evidence we're not alone

Down to Earth

Anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker is unraveling the mysteries of the ancient Olmec by figuring out what they ate

One Man Band

The next Bob Dylan? Maybe. Sufjan Stevens' honest sound and stark lyrics speak volumes to a new generation. And he plays all the instruments

Wild Woman

Playwright Sarah Ruhl speaks softly and carries a big kick

Primed for Success

Terence Tao is regarded as first among equals among young mathematicians, but who's counting

Faith Healer

Religious historian Reza Aslan calls for a return to Islam's tradition of tolerance

Organizing Principal

In the South Bronx, Ramón Gonzalez gives a troubled middle school a kidcentric makeover

The Bias Detective

How does prejudice affect people? Psychologist Jennifer Richeson is on the case

Crossing the Divide

Novelist Daniel Alarcón's writings evoke the gritty, compelling landscape of urban Latin America

Civil Wrongs

In a painstaking study of 1960s Atlanta, Kevin Kruse takes suburban whites to task

Rock of Ages

Where did the world's highest mountains come from? Geologist Elizabeth Catlos takes a new view

I, Lender

Software engineer Matt Flannery pioneers Internet microloans to the world's poor

Comedienne of Manners

Novelist ZZ Packer uses humor to point up some disconcerting signposts along America's racial divide

Keeper of the Keys

Pianist Jason Moran laces his strikingly original music with the soulful sounds of jazz greats

Marked Man

Guerilla artist James De La Vega leverages his street smarts to a fashion career

Net Worker

Where are your friends in cyberspace? Closer than you might think, says Internet researcher Jon Kleinberg

Making the Grade

Yurok Indian Geneva Wiki is helping other young Native Americans "develop their best selves"

From the Castle

Sci-High

A Pox Upon the Kauri

New Zealanders rally to save their much-loved, 2,000-year-old national symbol

West Side Glory

Out of Hell's Kitchen came an image that would epitomize one of Broadway's greatest love stories