UCLA will create three new graduate student fellowships with a $1.5 million gift from the Julian Schwinger Foundation for Physics Research.
Graduate students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy are eligible to receive the fellowship. The fellowship covers tuition and fees and provides a stipend that covers professional and travel expenses for up to four years to allow students to focus on their research, according to a university press release.
The fellowships are named in honor of Julian Schwinger, a former UCLA physics professor who taught from 1971 to 1988. Schwinger’s work on quantum electrodynamics led to him to receive a 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. Schwinger was also a recipient of the first Einstein Prize in 1951. With the addition of the three new fellowships, there will be a total of four Julian Schwinger Fellowships offered at UCLA.
The first Schwinger fellowship was awarded in 2014 after a $1.2 million donation from the Julian Schwinger Foundation. Following the recent gift from the foundation, the UCLA Chancellor’s Centennial Graduate Scholars Match contributed $500,000 and the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences contributed an additional $2.5 million toward the awards.
The Julian Schwinger Foundation for Physics Research was formed by Schwinger’s wife, Clarice Carrol, and UCLA physics professor Seth Putterman.