The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization that awards prestigious fellowships to Ph.D. students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. The fellowship provides students with up to $250,000 of support over five years, giving them flexibility and the ability to pursue their own interests, as well as mentoring from alumni fellows. Fellowship recipients pledge to make their skills available to the United States in times of national emergency.

Hertz Fellowship

History

The Hertz Foundation was established in 1957 with the goal of supporting applied sciences education. The founder, John D. Hertz, was a European emigrant whose family arrived in the United States with few resources, when the Hertz was five years old. Hertz matured into a prominent entrepreneur and business leader (founder of the Yellow Cab Company and owner of the Hertz corporation) as the automotive age burgeoned in Chicago. Initially, the Foundation granted undergraduate scholarships to qualified and financially limited mechanical and electrical engineering students. In 1963, the undergraduate scholarship program was phased out and replaced with postgraduate fellowships leading to the award of the Ph.D. The scope of the studies supported by the fellowships was also enlarged to include applied sciences and other engineering disciplines.

Competitiveness

For the 2017–2018 academic year, nearly 800 applicants applied for 10 spots, giving it an acceptance rate of 1.5%. Since 1960, the foundation has made awards to 1,271 fellows, with 309 fellows affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 255 with Stanford University; 104 with the University of California, Berkeley; 95 with the California Institute of Technology; and 76 with Harvard University. These top five universities account for nearly two-thirds of all fellows.

Notable Fellows

In 2018, some 30 Hertz Fellows were recognized by MIT Technology Review, Forbes, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, National Academy of Sciences and many others for outstanding work in their respective fields.

Thesis Prize

The Hertz Foundation requires that each Fellow furnish the Foundation a copy of his or her doctoral dissertation upon receiving the Ph.D. The Foundation's Thesis Prize Committee examines the Ph.D. dissertations for their overall excellence and pertinence to high-impact applications of the physical sciences. Each Thesis Prize winner receives an honorarium of $5,000.