Two Yale faculty members and ten Yale alumni were chosen from nearly 3,000 candidates to be named Guggenheim fellows for their achievements in scholarship or the creative arts. The prize is given out to candidates from the U.S. and Canada by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Jun Korenaga, professor of geology and geophysics, and Steven Pincus, professor of history, were selected for the fellowship. Korenaga, who gained his reputation for challenging prevailing opinion in the field with his hypothesis of slower plate tectonics on young earth, plans to use the fellowship to the optimization of his latest method of data collection, which helps explore hitherto unknown portions of the earth’s crust.

Pincus, who in the past has studied a range of topics from the history of coffee houses to the nature of mercantilism, plans to use the fellowship to research a book-length project which will probe the genesis of the British Empire from c. 1650 to 1784.

The 2014 Guggenheim fellows were the 90th class to be awarded.

BEN FAIT