A total of 354 scholars, artists, and scientists received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1971. $3,787,000 was disbursed between the recipients, who were chosen from an applicant pool of 2,363. Of the 96 universities represented, Harvard University boasted the most faculty winners (21), with University of California, Berkeley in second (19) and Columbia University in third (15). This was the first time in several years that Berkeley did not have the most winners.
|-
| rowspan="7" | Drama and Performance Art || Julie Bovasso || Sarah Lawrence College || || ||
|-
| Ed Bullins || || Playwriting || Also won in 1976 ||
|-
| Lonnie Carter || <!--New Haven, CT--> || Creative writing for theater || ||
|-
| Rochelle Owens || || || ||
|-
| Sam Shepard || || || Also won in 1968 ||
|-
| Richard Ernest Whitehall || || || ||
|-
| rowspan="4" | Fiction || Robert Coover || <!--Kent, England--> || rowspan="4" | Writing || Also won in 1974 ||
|-
| Victor Kolpacoff || Hobart and William Smith Colleges (visiting) || ||
|-
| Wilfrid Sheed || Princeton University || ||
|-
| Richard L. Myers || Kent State University || || Also won in 1969 ||
|-
| Harry D. Bouras || Columbia College Chicago || ||
|-
| İlhan Mimaroğlu || || ||
|-
| Charles Mingus || New York State University at Buffalo || Also won in 1978 ||
|-
| Loren Rush || <!--Richmond, CA--> || ||
|-
| Halsey Stevens || University of Southern California || Also won in 1964 ||
|-
| Olly W. Wilson || University of California, Berkeley || Also won in 1977 ||
|-
| Mark Cohen || King's College || Travel to Ireland and Greece || Also won in 1976 ||
|-
| Cervin Robinson || || || ||
|-
| Henry Wessel || || "U.S. highways and the adjacent landscape" || Also won in 1978 ||
|-
| rowspan="6" | Poetry || Tom Clark || The Paris Review || rowspan="2" | Writing || ||
|-
| Thomas Kinsella || Temple University || Anthology of Irish tradition || Also won in 1968 ||
|-
| Ruth Stone || || New roof for her home || Also won in 1975 ||
|-
| rowspan="104" | Humanities || African Studies || David W. Cohen || Johns Hopkins University || Precolonial history of the East African Lake Victoria region || ||
|-
| Ernest Samuels || Northwestern University || Bernard Berenson biography || Also won in 1955 ||
|-
| Milton R. Stern || University of Connecticut || Politics of American literature || ||
|-
| Richard Winston || || || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | British History || Arthur B. Ferguson || Duke University || How the people of 16th-century Tudor England thought of themselves in relationship to the past || ||
|-
| Katherine S. Van Eerde || Muhlenberg College || John Ogilby || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | Classics || Steele Commager || Amherst College || || ||
|-
| || Harvard University || || ||
|-
| Wesley D. Smith || University of Pennsylvania || || ||
|-
| rowspan="2" | East Asian Studies || Donald Keene || Columbia University || || Also won in 1961 ||
|-
| James Jo-Yu Liu || Stanford University || || ||
|-
| George L. Levine || Livingston College || Conventions of realism in the 19th-century novel || ||
|-
| rowspan="2" | Folklore and Popular Culture || Richard M. Dorson || Indiana University || || Also won in 1949, 1964 ||
|-
| Bruce Jackson || University at Buffalo || Historical and psychological study of Afro-American folklore || ||
|-
| French History || Nathanael Greene || Wesleyan University || French provincial politics in the 1930s || ||
|-
| Joseph H. McMahon || Wesleyan University || Jean-Jacques Rousseau's La nouvelle Héloïse || ||
|-
| Leonard Kriegel || City College of New York || || ||
|-
| H. G. Koenigsberger || Cornell University || States General of the Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries || ||
|-
| rowspan="5" | German and Scandinavian Literature || || McGill University || || ||
|-
| Jeffrey L. Sammons || Yale University || Literary sociology || ||
|-
| Nathan Sivin || Massachusetts Institute of Technology || || ||
|-
| Arnold W. Thackray || University of Pennsylvania || || Also won in 1985 ||
|-
| Bernard Spolsky || University of New Mexico || Relationship of language and education || ||
|-
| Martin Price || Yale University || Changing conceptions of character in the novel || Also won in 1957 ||
|-
| Medieval History || Angeliki Laiou || Harvard University || || Also won in 1978 ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | Medieval Literature || || Yale University || Dante's allegory || ||
|-
| Lars Lönnroth || University of California, Berkeley || Njáls saga || ||
|-
| Leon Plantinga || Yale University || Music of Muzio Clementi || ||
|-
| Giorgio Tonelli || SUNY Binghamton || Historical background of Immanuel Kant's philosophy || ||
|-
| rowspan="2" | Russian History || Vartan Gregorian ||University of Texas, Austin || National culture in Soviet Armenia, 1920-1970 || ||
|-
| rowspan="5" | Spanish and Portuguese Literature || Samuel Gordon Armistead || University of Pennsylvania || || Also won in 1966 ||
|-
| || Wheaton College || || ||
|-
| rowspan="2" | Theatre Arts || George C. Izenour || Yale University || History of theater design || ||
|-
| rowspan="11" | United States History || Stephen Foster || Northern Illinois University || Origins of congregational polity in England and America, 1620-1649 || ||
|-
| Alfred F. Hurley || US Air Force Academy || Institutional history of the US Air Force || ||
|-
| Stanley I. Kutler || University of Wisconsin, Madison ||John Marshall's judicial career || ||
|-
| William Stanton || University of Pittsburgh || Intelllectual history of the United States, 1815-1848 || ||
|-
| rowspan="107" | Natural Sciences || rowspan="5" | Applied Mathematics || C. K. Chu || Columbia University || || ||
|-
| Stanford S. Penner || University of California, San Diego || Spectroscopy; theory of reactive flows || ||
|-
| rowspan="2" | Astronomy and Astrophysics || Donald E. Gault || Ames Research Center || Impacts made by micro-particles on a simulated lunar surface|| ||
|-
| John A. Simpson || University of Chicago || || Also won in 1984 ||
|-
| rowspan="14" | Chemistry || Paul D. Bartlett || Harvard University || || Also won in 1955 ||
|-
| Paul Delahay || New York University || || Also won in 1955 ||
|-
| Leon M. Dorfman || Ohio State University || Research at the Royal Institution of Great Britain || ||
|-
| Saul T. Epstein || University of Wisconsin, Madison || Quantum chemistry || ||
|-
| Fred W. McLafferty || Cornell University || Techniques of mass spectrometry in organic chemistry, biochemistry and photochemistry || ||
|-
| Norbert T. Porile || Purdue University || High energy chemistry || ||
|-
| Ulrich P. Strauss || Rutgers University || Physical chemistry of polyelectrolytes || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | Computer Science || King-Sun Fu || Purdue University || New approach to pattern recognition through stochastic languages, considering such factors as noise and distortion || ||
|-
| Aravind Joshi || University of Pennsylvania || || ||
|-
| Robert A. Berner || Yale University || Sedimentary geochemistry || ||
|-
| Kenneth J. Hsü || ETH Zurich || || ||
|-
| Arvid M. Johnson || rowspan=2" | Stanford University || || ||
|-
| Ferren MacIntyre || University of California, Santa Barbara || Philosophical studies of man, nature and technology || ||
|-
| John T. Wasson || University of California, Los Angeles || || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | Engineering || Rutherford Aris || University of Minnesota || || ||
|-
| Charles A. Eckert || University of Illinois || Chemical kinetics || ||
|-
| Gareth Thomas || University of California, Berkeley || High voltage electron microscopy || ||
|-
| Louis Auslander || CUNY Graduate Center || Research at the Institute for Advanced Studies || ||
|-
| Patrick Billingsley || University of Chicago || Research at University of Cambridge || ||
|-
| Rafael V. Chacon || University of Minnesota || || ||
|-
| || University of Wisconsin, Madison || Mathematical analysis of complex biological models || ||
|-
| rowspan="8" | Medicine and Health || Raul E. Falicov || University of Chicago || || ||
|-
| Kenneth L. Melmon || University of California Medical Center || || ||
|-
| Paul G. Quie || University of Minnesota Medical School || || ||
|-
| Bruce A. D. Stocker || Stanford University || || Also won in 1981 ||
|-
| rowspan="17" | Molecular and Cellular Biology || Elijah Adams || University of Maryland School of Medicine || Synthesis of peptides || ||
|-
| W. Lane Barksdale || New York University School of Medicine || || ||
|-
| Harold J. Bright || University of Pennsylvania || || ||
|-
| Jerry L. Hedrick || Biochemistry of fertilization || ||
|-
| Frans F. Jöbsis || Duke University || Cellular physiology || ||
|-
| Leonard S. Lerman || Vanderbilt University || || ||
|-
| Noboru Sueoka || Princeton University || || ||
|-
| Neuroscience || Abraham Spector || Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons || Protein synthesis in bacterial systems || ||
|-
| rowspan="7" | Organismic Biology and Ecology || John Tyler Bonner || Princeton University || || Also won in 1957 ||
|-
| Joseph H. Connell || University of California, Santa Barbara || Experimental studies in population ecology || Also won in 1962 ||
|-
| William M. Hamner III || University of California, Davis || || ||
|-
| Michael Menaker || University of Texas, Austin || Research at the University of Montpellier || ||
|-
| George B. Schaller || New York Zoological Society; Rockefeller University || || ||
|-
| rowspan="26" | Physics || Joseph Ballam || Stanford University || || ||
|-
| Boris W. Batterman || Cornell University || Solid-state physics || ||
|-
| Sidney David Drell || Stanford Linear Accelerator Center || || Also won in 1961 ||
|-
| Thomas Ferbel || University of Rochester || Research at Fermilab || ||
|-
| Norman C. Ford || University of Massachusetts, Amherst || Characteristics of large molecules such as those that make up living tissue || ||
|-
| Steven Frautschi || rowspan="2" | California Institute of Technology || High-energy particle physics || ||
|-
| Frank S. Ham || General Electric || || ||
|-
| David Lowery Hendrie || Lawrence Radiation Laboratory || Experimental studies in high-energy nuclear physics || ||
|-
| Gordon L. Kane || University of Michigan || || ||
|-
| David Litster || Massachusetts Institute of Technology || || ||
|-
| Richard Marrus || University of California, Berkeley || Quantum electrodynamics || ||
|-
| Carl E. McIlwain || University of California, San Diego || Plasma phenomena in the magnetosphere || Also won in 1967 ||
|-
| || University of Wisconsin, Madison || High-energy physics || ||
|-
| Walter Selove || University of Pennsylvania || || ||
|-
| rowspan="4" | Plant Science || Norman I. Bishop || Oregon State University || || ||
|-
| Subodh K. Jain || University of California, Davis || || ||
|-
| Robbins Burling || University of Michigan || Research in Toulouse || ||
|-
| J. Desmond Clark || University of California, Berkeley || African paleolithic archaeology || ||
|-
| Robert H. Dyson Jr. || University of Pennsylvania || || ||
|-
| John Middleton || New York University || || ||
|-
| Peter J. Powell || St. Augustine's Center for American Indians || || ||
|-
| rowspan="5" | Economics || Alfred S. Eichner || || ||
|-
| Gerald K. Helleiner || University of Toronto || || ||
|-
| Robert A. Mundell || University of Chicago || || ||
|-
| rowspan="3" | Education || Charles E. Bidwell || University of Chicago || || ||
|-
| Lee J. Cronbach || Stanford University || Interactions of psychological measurements and social policy || ||
|-
| Joseph J. Schwab || University of Chicago || || ||
|-
| Jerome A. Cohen || Harvard Law School || Research in Kyoto || ||
|-
| Melvin A. Eisenberg || University of California, Berkeley || Modern corporate decision-making || ||
|-
| Grant Gilmore || University of Chicago || || ||
|-
| Karl W. Deutsch || Harvard University || Formulation of a general theory of politics || Also won in 1954 ||
|-
| George Kateb || Amherst College || Study of the radical critique of liberal democracy || ||
|-
| Emilia Ferreiro || University of the Republic || Comparative developmental psycholinguistics || ||
|-
| Roger Newland Shepard || rowspan="2" | Stanford University || || ||
|-
| Troy Duster || University of California, Berkeley || Colonial analogy and the "black situation" in the United States || ||
|-
| Seymour Martin Lipset || Harvard University || Political role of intellectuals || ||
|-
| Theodore Roszak || California State University, Hayward || The making of a counterculture || ||
|-
| Ezra F. Vogel || Harvard University || || ||
|}
1971 Latin American and Caribbean Fellows
{| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers static-row-header-text"
! Category !! Field of Study !! Fellow !! Institutional association <!--(if applicable)--> !! Research topic !! Notes !! class="unsortable"| Ref
|-
| rowspan="10" | Creative Arts || rowspan="2" | Fiction || Max Aub || Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México || Life and times of Luis Buñuel || Also won in 1966, 1968 ||
|-
| Literary Criticism || Haroldo de Campos || <!--Sao Paulo--> || Development of the Brazilian contemporary novel || ||
|-
| || Instituto Politécnico Nacional || Spectroscopic studies of membrane phenomena || ||