Tommy Orange is among this year’s MacArthur Genius Grant awardees.
Michael Lionstar
Prize Patrol
The East Bay has historically been well represented among the MacArthur Fellowships, best known as the Genius Grants, and this year is no exception. The 2025 awardees were announced in October and include Oakland author Tommy Orange, Stanford assistant professor of chemical engineering and UC Berkeley alum William Tarpeh, and optometrist Teresa Puthussery. The latter was lauded for her research on the neurology of vision, while Tarpeh earned praise for “developing sustainable and practical methods to recover valuable chemical resources from wastewater.” Oakland has a prominent place in Orange’s acclaimed 2018 debut, There, There, and 2024’s Wandering Stars.
John Clarke
Courtesy of Darwin College, Cambridge
The 2025 Nobel Prize winners were also revealed in early October, with UC Berkeley professors earning separate honors. John Clarke received the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.” Clarke is an emeritus professor of physics at UC Berkeley, and the trio conducted their scholarly investigations at Cal. Omar M. Yaghi shared his Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson for developing metal-organic frameworks that can reduce pollution, among other uses.
Grabbing Gold
Pleasanton’s Apoorvaa Muruganathan won a gold medal at this year’s Taekwon-Do World Championships. Muruganathan competed with Team USA at the event in Barcelona and also took home two silver medals and one bronze, in addition to the gold medal for team power breaking. She is a junior at Amador Valley High School.
Everest Achievement
In October, Walnut Creek native Jim Morrison became the first person to descend the north face of Mount Everest. The 50-year-old skied down the treacherous line in a little over four hours, starting at an elevation of 29,032 feet and finishing at 19,974 feet. Morrison’s accomplishment will be part of a National Geographic documentary that is in the works by the Oscar-winning team behind Free Solo.
Class Act
UC Berkeley emeritus professor Robert Reich has been busy. In August, the writer, commentator, and former secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration released Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America. The book chronicles the life experiences of the 4’11” author and analyzes events that led to our current political environment. Reich is also the subject of a documentary, The Last Class, which chronicles his final semester teaching the Wealth and Poverty course at UC Berkeley.
Emilie White
Photo Contest
This East Bay church is on the National Register of Historic Places. Do you know where it is?
Go to diablomag.com/contests and enter your guess. One correct response will receive dinner at an East Bay restaurant.