
Special Report
2016 Ingenuity Awards
“Thanks to her,” John Frederick Nims writes in his love poem to gravity, “All’s gala in the galaxy.” Such a deep appreciation for gravity’s wonderful predictability is, just by chance, a recurring theme of this year’s Smithsonian American Ingenuity Awards. Jeff Bezos is defying gravity with his spaceflight company’s reusable rocket ships. The scientists behind the stupendous LIGO instrument detected, for the first time ever, the whisper of a gravitational wave from the far reaches of the universe. And the rock band OK Go’s lighthearted nature was never so clear as in its topsy-turvy, low-gravity video. Those musical magicians, like all the American Ingenuity Award winners, dazzle us with their eagerness to break boundaries. And they make it look like fun.
Read about this year's winners below and watch the livestream of the Ingenuity Awards on December 8 at 8 pm on our Facebook page.
Past Winners
2015
The 2015 American Ingenuity Awards
Featuring Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, comedians Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, and Pluto explorer Alan Stern
2014
The 2014 American Ingenuity Awards
Featuring musician Rosanne Cash, artist Janet Echelman, filmmaker Bill Morrison, and bionic limb pioneer Hugh Herr
2013
The 2013 American Ingenuity Awards
Featuring novelist Dave Eggers, musician St. Vincent, engineer Adam Steltzner, and education scholar Caroline Hoxby
Photo credits: Jeff Bezos/John Keatley; Sarah Parcak/Melissa Golden/Satellite image courtesy of Sarah Parcak; Aziz Ansari/Landon Nordeman; David Lynch/Brinson + Banks; Anthony Atala/Alex Boerner; Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish/Brinson + Banks; Marc Edwards and LeeAnne Walters/Tobias Hutzler; Christopher Gray/Jonathan Barkat