Smithsonian Magazine Presents American Ingenuity Awards (photos)

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought,” said the 1937 American-Hungarian Nobel laureate Albert von Szent-Gyorgy, who was credited with discovering Vitamin C.

Smithsonian magazine presented the American Ingenuity Awards, honoring revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress, at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Dec. 8. It was a fitting location for such a gathering, since the museum is housed in one of the earliest United States Patent Office buildings.

This year’s winners were:

**Technology:** Jeff Bezos, for advances in space exploration through his company Blue Origin.

**Physical Sciences:** Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Ronald Drever, for proving Einstein’s theory of the existence of gravitational waves in the universe.

**Performing Arts:** Aziz Ansari, actor, writer and comedian, for his innovative show “Master of None.”

**Education:** Film director David Lynch, for his work through the David Lynch Foundation to promote meditation in schools.

**Visual Arts:** OK Go, Damian Kulash and Trish Sie, for their groundbreaking, zero-gravity video, “Upside Down and Inside Out.”

**Social Progress:** Marc Edwards and LeeAnne Walters, who uncovered the Flint, Michigan, water crisis.

**Life Sciences:** Anthony Atala, whose innovations in 3D printing to create human organs is nothing short of a medical miracle.

**History:** Sarah Parcak, the “space archeologist,” who is developing an online interactive citizen science platform, so everyone with a computer can discover and monitor archaeological sites.

**Youth Achievement:** Christopher Gray, who created Scholly, an app and web platform that uses an algorithm to connect eligible students with pre-screened scholarships.

Presenters included astronaut Mae Jamison, actor Eric Warheim, actor Kyle MacLachlan, NPR’s Ari Shapiro, EpiBone CEO Nina Tandon, Smithsonian Under Secretary Richard Kurin, physicist Jim Gates, M. Night Shyamalan, cosmologist Stephen Hawking, Erin Brokovich and Stephen Colbert (the latter three via remote video hookup).

“We have always been an intensely creative, problem-solving country,” said Smithsonian magazine’s Editor in Chief Michael Caruso. “These are the Americans who are working hard every day to build our future.”

*View Jeff Malet’s photos from the red carpet by clicking on the icons below.*