The Julian Schwinger Foundation for Physics Research has created a first-of-its-kind award for the physics and astronomy department in the UCLA College of Letters and Science by endowing the department with a $1.2 million fellowship. The foundation intends the fellowship to enable students to focus on their research without undue financial pressure.

The fellowship will provide graduate students with, for a maximum of four years, full tuition and fees, along with an inflation-protected stipend of $42,000 a year. An additional $3,000 a year will be provided for professional and travel expenses.

"The Julian Schwinger Fellowship is a game-changer for the department," said Joseph Rudnick, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and senior dean of the College of Letters and Science. "This fellowship will allow the department to compete with the best programs in the world, recruit the finest minds in physics and lead in discoveries that could change the world."

The foundation is named for former UCLA physics professor Julian Schwinger, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with Richard Feynman and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for their research on quantum electrodynamics. In 1971, he joined the faculty at UCLA, where he taught and carried out research until his death in 1994. At Schwinger's request, his wife, Clarice, and his colleague Seth Putterman, a UCLA professor of physics, collected the Schwinger assets into a charitable foundation.

This is adapted from a longer article on UCLA Newsroom.