Hartford, Conn., September 19, 2006—D. Holmes Morton’79, has been named one of 25 MacArthur Fellows for 2006. Recipients are selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future and each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.

Morton is best known for establishing the not-for-profit Clinic for Special Children, a medical facility in a farming community in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife Caroline, in 1989. During the Clinic’s first years, Morton maintained a focus on genetic diseases concentrated in Amish and Mennonite communities. His research findings have influenced the work of many in the mainstream medical community.  Indeed, a number of the disorders Morton treats cluster in populations in Europe and in the Middle East, and his clinic has become an international resource for diagnosis and treatment.  Today, he and his colleagues have begun investigating and treating genetically-based maladies not specifically concentrated in the community, including autism, seizure disorders, and mental retardation, in an effort to better understand how these more common ailments present in highly isolated groups.

Widely recognized for his pioneering work, Morton received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1993, was lauded as one of Time magazine’s “Heroes of Medicine” in 1997, and was recently featured in Smithsonian Magazine and the New York Times Magazine.

Morton received a B.S. degree through the Individualized Degree Program (IDP) at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., in 1979, received an M.D. (1983) from Harvard Medical School, and completed his residency at Children’s Hospital in Boston.  He also conducted biochemical genetics research at Johns Hopkins University and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.   Morton’s articles have appeared in such publications as Nature Genetics, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, and Pediatrics.

According to Morton’s former thesis advisor, Trinity College Professor of Psychology William Mace, the fellowship comes as no surprise. “As a student, Holmes was a faculty member's dream—not because he seemed smart but because he was so genuinely interested.” Mace continues, “Like Socrates and Columbo, he is quick to be puzzled and slow to be fooled, and he is far more impressed by what he does not know than by what he knows. Mace notes that after he visited Holmes several years ago, he returned and told a colleague that Holmes' work had elevated to Nobel Prize levels. “But whether hyperbole or not,” Mace adds, “the MacArthur suggests that others have seen similar achievement and promise.”