Meet These Geniuses Pas t, Present — and Future

Before you witnessed Amanda Gorman’s genius onstage at the 2021 presidential inauguration, she was an OZY Genius Award winner.

The OZY Genius Awards can help you launch your dream as well. Life's too short not to dream big. This fall, 10 grants backing genius ideas will be awarded to current U.S. college students. What’s your big idea?

The competition runs from Sept. 8 through Oct. 31, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. (PST). Winners will be announced on Nov. 15, 2022.

Despite science, society and Silicon Valley’s common belief that creativity, innovation and excellence are the near-exclusive province of the young, a surprising number of late bloomers dot the annals of human history — women and men who endured years of hardship, failure and missed opportunities before making an impact in the later stages of life. And once you move past the dazzling glare of history’s Mozart-like geniuses, you find that late bloomers are quite abundant, including Robert Frost, Julia Child, Madam C.J. Walker and many more. In fact, there are many more roads to becoming an old master than a young prodigy.

Mariah Carey is known for soaring performances that ooze emotion. She infuses her songs with dramatic intensity — accompanied by equally impressive gesticulations. Sure, it’s tempting to dismiss her gestures as diva-esque flourishes, but there’s scientific evidence to suggest that gesticulating can spur creativity. A Psychological Science study found that the more children gestured, the more creative ideas they generated.

You could say that Nikola Tesla essentially invented the 20th century — with everything from electric motors to remote controls, radars and radio. But significant complications seemed to lurk behind his brilliance. His obsessive mind, helped by an eidetic memory that focused the direction of his experiments, would often give way to what some historians say resembled the chronic symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

On May 15, 1940 (which would be termed “Nylon Day” or “N-Day”), millions of American women from coast to coast queued up in long lines. Why the frenzy? For the chance to buy a $1.25 pair of stockings made of nylon — the miracle synthetic fabric developed in a DuPont lab. Nylon was the brainchild of an ex-Harvard chemist named Wallace Carothers, who never lived to see the riots, or the revenues, generated by his wondrous invention. Ensuing decades would see nylon appear in carpeting, clothing, linens, tires, umbrellas and bulletproof vests.

For most of human history, the notion of a climate-controlled environment was sheer science fiction. As Mark Twain reportedly quipped, “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” That is, until 1902, when Willis Carrier, a 25-year-old Cornell engineer at the Buffalo Forge Company, had an epiphany. Staring through the fog on a misty train platform, he “realized he could dry air by passing it through water to create fog,” thereby controlling the moisture levels (humidity) of air. Carrier's ensuing invention, the air conditioning system, changed the comfort of the indoors.

You likely owe the cleanliness of your home to a 48-year-old former salesman and janitor. In the early 20th century, James Murray Spangler took an electric fan, a broom handle and a pillowcase and created a “suction sweeper” that operated on electricity and would change the history of home cleaning. Spangler’s invention— the precursor to the modern domestic vacuum cleaner — would revolutionize how people cleaned their homes, and kick-start what is nearly a $15 billion industry today.

Do you have a genius idea? Are you ready to take it to the next level? Apply now for an OZY Genius Award and let’s make it happen.

Application Deadline is October 31, 2022! Don't wait!

She wowed the world with her poetry at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. But we first met Amanda Gorman back in 2017 — when she was just 19 and an OZY Genius Award winner. Her project was called Generation Empathy and the idea involved creating a virtual museum featuring digital portraits of a select handful of young activists. “We have these phenomenal change-makers who have these really incredible microphones to talk about society’s problems,” Gorman told us. “What I want to do is highlight the lesser-known ones who are putting themselves on the line and taking risks for what they believe in.”

Millions of incarcerated Americans and their families pay an exorbitant amount to simply stay in touch with one another. The $1.2 billion for-profit prison telecommunications industry charges as much as $25 for a 15-minute phone call between an inmate and a loved one on the outside, adding to the burdens borne by already-struggling families. Gabriel Saruhashi believes that inmates’ access to communication with loved ones is a right, not a privilege, and has helped create an app called Ameelio, which allows families to send letters, photos or postcards to incarcerated loved ones free of charge via their smartphone or computer.

Saving the planet will take ingenuity and imagination, and Antonia Ginsberg-Klemmt is on the case. Her interest in protecting the environment can be traced back to her electrical engineer father, a fervent proponent of alternative energy. She has also come of age when her peers, like Greta Thunberg, are mobilizing against climate change and remain determined to be part of the solution. Ginsberg-Klemmt was a 2021 OZY Genius Award winner for her patent-pending invention, Gismo Power, a portable solar carport with an integrated electric vehicle (EV) charger.

Brandy Star Merriweather helped launch Creator Equality, a union for digital creatives — who are Black, Indigenous and people of color — that is designed to amplify their stories, set standards and practices and provide legal, financial and publicity support free of charge. “Almost every industry has some type of union to support the people who work within it, except for digital creators,” Merriweather says. But digital creators — a term that encompasses people who create content for digital properties, such as YouTube or Instagram — have gone without an organized body to advocate for and protect their interests.

What genius has inspired you?