The MacArthur Foundation named 23 MacArthur Fellows for 2010 today. That is to say, 23 smartypants learned from the Foundation that they will each land a cool $500,000 in "no strings attached" financial support over the next five years. We're jealous.

Three lucky winners live right here in the Bay Area:

Carlos D. Bustamante, 35
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford
Nerd power: "Population Geneticist mining DNA sequence data to address funda-mental questions about the mechanisms of evolution, the complex origins of human genetic diversity, and patterns of population migration."

Emmanuel Saez, 37
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley
Nerd power: "Economist drawing on quantitative analyses, behavioral experiments, and theoretical insights to enhance our understanding of the relationship between income and tax policy."