An economist whose investigations into student achievement examined the impact of rewards for good grades; a Pulitzer Prize winner who was the country’s 16th poet laureate; and a clinical psychologist seeking to pinpoint who is at risk for suicide were among the 22 recipients of the $500,000 “genius awards,” to be announced on Tuesday by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

This year, as in years past, the 12 men and 10 women selected are a mix of the well known and the little known, and they represent a broad swath of the arts and sciences. The MacArthur award, which has been bestowed on 850 people since the program began in 1981, comes in five annual payments of $100,000, with no strings attached.

Kay Ryan, 65, a former poet laureate of the United States who won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry this year, said the money provided a certain “mental ease,” as she continues to write and to advocate for community colleges, where she has taught remedial English skills for decades.

“I was very, very surprised,” said Ms. Ryan, who lives in Fairfax, Calif. “I had certainly thought I was over the hill. Obviously these people think I’ve got five more good years in me.”

The winners range in age from 29 to 67. Shwetak Patel, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Alisa Weilerstein, a cellist in New York City, are both 29. Ubaldo Vitali, 67, is a conservator, scholar and silversmith in Maplewood, N.J.

Besides Ms. Ryan and Ms. Weilerstein, other winners in the arts this year include A. E. Stallings, 43, a poet and translator from Athens; Francisco Núñez, 46, a conductor, composer, pianist and founder of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City; Dafnis Prieto, 37, a jazz percussionist and composer in New York City; Peter Hessler, 42, a journalist cited for his writing about reform-era China; and Jad Abumrad, 38, the co-host and producer of “Radiolab,” a program on WNYC in New York that explores questions of science and philosophy, like the nature of altruism.

“This show is the central creative mission of my life right now, and the money might give me the space to bring new things into it,” Mr. Abumrad said.

Robert Gallucci, the president of the MacArthur Foundation, said many factors are considered when choosing fellows. The secretive selection process relies on hundreds of anonymous nominators to help identify potential honorees.

“Fellows are selected for their creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future,” Mr. Gallucci said.

Some have also raised provocative questions in their fields. Roland Fryer, 34, an economics professor at Harvard, has made headlines for his studies of what factors influence grades and test scores of children and the role of race and economics. In one analysis he found that peer group loyalty sometimes competes with academic performance, especially in racially mixed settings.

Kevin Guskiewicz, 45, a researcher, athletic trainer and professor in the department of exercise and sport science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said he intended to put a major portion of his fellowship money into his work. That work involves diagnosing and treating sports-related concussions, which led to his development of the balance error scoring system.

Based on the idea that balance and posture can help to evaluate concussions objectively, the system uses a symptom checklist as well as an inexpensive device made of foam and a stopwatch.

Acknowledging that his work has the potential to save lives, Mr. Guskiewicz said he was still “floored, surprised and honored, all at the same time,” by the MacArthur grant.

Matthew Nock, 38, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, also conducts research that can be life-saving: he tries to determine who is at risk for suicide and self-injury, using laboratory experiments and other self-assessments. “Suicide, in many cases, just seems to come out of the blue,” Mr. Nock said of the impetus for his work.

Two other MacArthur fellows working on problems affecting particular populations are Elodie Ghedin, 44, a biomedical researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who studies pathogens that cause diseases, like river blindness, that affect millions in poor countries, and Marie-Therese Connolly, 54, an advocate, based in Washington, for the rights of older Americans.

“I couldn’t think of another issue in this country that has such an impact on so many people,” Ms. Connolly said of her work tackling elder abuse and mistreatment by breaking down barriers among social services, health care, legal and financial systems. Her MacArthur award, she said, will help bring attention to the issue.

This year three fellows came from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They are Tiya Miles, 41, a public historian and history professor who has researched the relationships between African and Cherokee people in colonial America; Melanie Sanford, 36, a professor of chemistry whose research on organometallic synthesis has implications for pharmaceuticals and other products; and Yukiko Yamashita, 39, a developmental biologist who studies the mechanisms that regulate stem cell division.

Also honored this year are Jeanne Gang, 47, an architect in Chicago acclaimed for her Aqua building, a mixed-use skyscraper; Markus Greiner, 38, an experimental physicist at Harvard whose research focuses on the principles of condensed-matter physics; Sarah Otto, 43, a theoretical biologist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, whose work includes assessing the benefits of sexual and asexual reproduction; William Seeley, 39, a professor and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, whose work examines neurodegenerative disease; and Jacob Soll, 42, a historian at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J., whose studies of early modern Europe are shaping the understanding of the origins of the modern state.