Three Seniors Awarded Hertz Fellowships

Three Harvard seniors have been awarded Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowships that will pay their tuition for graduate school and give them each a $25,000 personal-support stipend that can be renewed annually.

Adam E. Cohen '01, Lucas G. Nivon '01, and Russell S. Cox '01 will be officially announced as Hertz Foundation award recipients next week.

Cohen is a chemistry and physics concentrator and spent the last few years working in chemistry Professor George M. Whitesides' lab. He studied the effect of molecular structure on electrical properties, but plans to do other research in graduate school.

He plans to defer his fellowship for two years while he studies at Cambridge University on a Marshall scholarship.

Cohen and Nivon are roommates in Winthrop House, and Nivon said he was thrilled and surprised to win the grant.

"As a biochemistry concentrator, I thought that I wouldn't stand a serious chance of winning a prize for applied physical science," he said. "Plus the envelope they sent was sort of middling in size and couldn't immediately be classified as 'reject' or 'accept.'"

Nivon is a biochemical sciences concentrator who has studied physics and chemistry extensively during his undergraduate years. He will enroll in graduate school at Harvard next year, but will spend most of his time studying in Zurich.

When Lucas returns to Cambridge, Mass., he will enter Harvard's biophysics program and said he will use his stipend for "extravagant things like rent, food, and running water."

Harvard's third winner, Cox, has concentrated in computer science and plans to continue working in the same field in graduate school, though he hasn't decided where he will enroll.

When asked about the most difficult portion of the Hertz application process, Russ said, "the interviews are notoriously grueling, covering a wide range of physical knowledge. No one I've talked to has ever walked out of a Hertz interview thinking they did well. I am no exception."

Nivon also said he found his interview to be extremely broad in the amount of information he was asked to speak about. He compared it to "an open-ended exam which can test all the science you've ever studied, [a test] which you have to take with someone looking over your shoulder and making comments."

The graduate fellowship that Cohen, Nivon and Cox won is provided by the Hertz Foundation, a private foundation that provides fellowships for graduate work in the applied physical science leading to a Ph.D.