3 From Caltech Win MacArthur Fellowships : Awards: Scholars are among 31 people in U.S. and Europe who will receive cash grants with no strings attached.

Three Caltech scholars who answered the phone recently received the kind of news many scientists desire but few dare expect--they had been secretly nominated, discussed and finally awarded MacArthur Foundation fellowships.

They were among 31 fellows in the United States and Europe announced Monday, and will divide--no strings attached--$875,000. In addition to the Caltech academics, the winners include historian Taylor Branch and documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls.

Five other California-based artists and scholars also were on the list of fellowships from the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. All receive cash grants ranging from $150,000 to $375,000, depending on age, paid over five years.

For James F. Blinn, 42, a Caltech computer graphics animator, the fellowship is “something that I knew was a possibility--but I never knew whether any fantasies I had were likely to be true.”

Blinn, who will receive $265,000, is associate director of Project MATHEMATICS!, an award-winning videotape series that uses computer graphics to simulate everything from pi to Pythagoras’ theorem. He also has created a video physics class and simulated planetary fly-bys for NASA, including Voyager II’s journey through Saturn’s rings.

Jacqueline K. Barton, 39, a Caltech professor of bioinorganic chemistry specializing in work on DNA, will receive $250,000. From her office at the Pasadena campus, Barton said she was “honored, of course. Not a lot of chemists that I know of have MacArthur fellowships.”

The other Caltech honoree, James A. Westphal, 61, is a planetary sciences professor who designs and constructs cameras for space missions and will receive $360,000.

Westphal is an anomaly in the world of high-level scholarship. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa but never went to graduate school.

He designed the camera for the Hubble Space Telescope and built ground-based telescopes on Mt. Wilson, Hawaii, and Chile.

San Diego performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena said Monday a burden goes with his $230,000 award. Gomez-Pena, an activist whose works focus on border issues, said his jubilation is tinged with a sense of responsibility.

“For the next five years my economical Angst will be somewhat resolved, but I have to consider how to keep a sense of political clarity and social responsibility. . . , “ he said by phone from Brooklyn. “I want to do it right, very carefully.”

Another winner from San Diego was Patricia Smith Churchland, 47, a UCSD philosophy professor who said the $290,000 grant will go toward a research project on how the brain manages time.

“I think we’re still trying to answer what it is to be conscious . . . and learning how to understand knowledge,” she said.

Musician and composer Ali Akbar Khan, 69, of Marin County, said the unexpected $375,000 grant made him “very happy,” but that the award would not change his lifestyle.

“I have taught in this country since 1965, and started my school (the Ali Akbar College of Music) in San Rafael in 1968,” said Khan, a native of India. “Over these years, we have taught more than 6,000 students.”

Stanford professor David Donoho, 34, was honored for his work in theoretical statistics. His grant totals $225,000.

David Werner, 56, is director of the Hesperian Foundation in Palo Alto. He is an advocate for health care in developing countries and author of “Where There Is No Doctor: A Village Healthcare Handbook,” an aid for diagnosing and treating people in remote communities and villages throughout the world.

Branch, 44, of Baltimore, writes on the recent social and political history of the United States. His book, “Parting the Waters,” about America in the years of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., won the Pulitzer and other prizes. His grant is $275,000.

Ophuls, 63, won a 1988 best documentary Oscar for “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie.” His grant is for $360,000.

“My first reaction when I got the call . . . was to go into hysterics,” said Ophuls from his home in Paris. “ ‘What do I do?’ I asked him. He said, ‘Well, go to the bank and cash the check.’

“The main danger when you’ve had to run after the groceries all your life is that you’ll get up later and later in the morning and start drinking earlier! Seriously. . . . One of the things I want to do is finish my book on ‘Hotel Terminus’ this summer.”

Other winners:

Paul Berman, 41, a political thinker and commentator in New York, $260,000; Trisha Brown, 54, dancer and choreographer in New York, $325,000; Mari Jo Buhle, 47, professor of American civilization and history at Brown University in Providence, R.I., $290,000; Steven Feld, 41, professor of anthropology and music at the University of Texas at Austin, $260,000; Alice Fulton, 39, poet and professor of English at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, $250,000; Jerzy Grotowski, 57, director, drama theorist and teacher of acting in Pontadena, Italy, $340,000; David Hammons, 47, artist, New York, $290,000; Sophia Bracy Harris, 41, executive director of the Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama, $260,000; W. Lewis Hyde, writer, professor at Kenyon College in Ohio, $280,000; Sergiu Klainerman, 41, professor of mathematics at Princeton University, $260,000; Martin E. Kreitman, 38, associate professor of ecology and evolution at Princeton University, $245,000; Harlan Lane, professor at Northeastern University in Massachusetts, psychologist and linguist, $325,000; William J. Linder, 55, pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Newark, N.J., and founder of The New Community Corp., $330,000; Patricia Locke, 63, executor of the International Native American Language Institute, Standing Rock Reservation, S.D., $369,000; Mark Morris, 34, dancer and choreographer, Brussels, Belgium, $225,000; Arnold Rampersad, 49, professor of English at Princeton University and scholar of Afro-American biography, $300,000; Gunther Schuller, 65, composer, conductor, scholar, jazz historian of Newton, Mass., $374,000; Joel Schwartz, 44, environmental epidemiologist, Washington, $275,000; Cecil Taylor, 62, avant-garde jazz composer and pianist in New York, $365,000; Julie Taymor, 38, independent theater artist in New York, $245,000; Eleanor Wilner, 52, poet and faculty member at the writers’ program at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, N.C, $315,000.

Times staff writers Kevin Thomas and Daniel Cariaga contributed to this story.