Clare Booth Luce Graduate Fellowships
- About Clare Boothe Luce and the Clare Boothe Luce Program
- About the Clare Boothe Luce Graduate Fellowships
- Contacts
- About the Henry Luce Foundation
About Clare Boothe Luce and the Clare Boothe Luce Program
Anne Clare Boothe was born in New York City in 1903. As a young woman, she was very active in the Suffrage movement. During a lifetime as a playwright, journalist, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and the first woman elected to Congress from Connecticut, she came to exemplify the potential of all women. In 1930 she became associate editor for Vanity Fair, resigning from that position in 1934 to pursue a career as a playwright. In 1935 she married Henry R. Luce and a year later her most successful play, The Women, opened on Broadway. In 1942 she was elected as a representative to Congress from Connecticut’s Fourth District and was reelected in 1944. As a member of Congress she was involved with establishing the Atomic Energy Commission. She wrote the screenplay for the movie Come to the Stable, which received an Oscar nomination for best motion picture in 1949. Mrs. Luce then returned to politics and was appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to Italy in 1953—the first American woman to represent the U.S. to a major world power. In 1983 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Mrs. Luce died in 1987 and left most of her estate to the Henry Luce Foundation. It was her desire to create a program that would benefit women with exceptional ability in the sciences and engineering where women continue to be underrepresented. The Clare Boothe Luce Program is the single largest private source of funding for women in science, mathematics and engineering in the United States. Since 1989 the program has supported more than 1500 women through undergraduate scholarships and research awards, graduate and post-doctoral fellowships, and term support for tenure-track appointments at the assistant or associate professorship level.
About the Clare Boothe Luce Graduate Fellowships at the University of Chicago
The Henry Luce Foundation has generously awarded a grant to the University of Chicago to support four one-year Clare Boothe Luce Graduate Fellowships for women entering Ph.D. programs in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics as early as the 2008-09 academic year. Applicants are required to be U.S. citizens. Each Fellow will receive:
- Tuition for the first year of graduate study
- Tuition for the summer following the fellowship year
- Over $19,000 in stipend and fees for the academic year
- An expense fund of $3,000 for books and educational supplies
- Additional funds for research and conference travel
Fellows will also benefit from the guidance of faculty mentors who are committed to helping Fellows attain their career and research goals. After the fellowship year, students will be supported through other fellowships or teaching or research assistantships for the remainder of their graduate programs.
“We anticipate that the establishment of the Clare Boothe Luce Fellowship at the University of Chicago will have a major national impact, that these Fellows will not only become academic leaders, but also will advance physical science research in areas of critical national need.”
—Robert Fefferman, Dean of the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago
Contacts
To be considered for the Clare Boothe Luce Graduate Fellowship Program for the 2008–2009 academic year, please contact the respective department.
| Astronomy/Astrophysics | Dr. Hsiao-Wen Chen hchen@oddjob.uchicago.edu 773-702-8747 |
| Computer Science | Dr. Anne Rogers amr@cs.uchicago.edu 773-834-9806 |
| Mathematics | Dr. Peter May may@math.uchicago.edu 773-702-7381 |
| Physics | Dr. Robert Wald rmwa@uchicago.edu 773-702-7006 |
About the Henry Luce Foundation
The late Henry R. Luce, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time Inc., established the Henry Luce Foundation in 1936. The work of the Luce Foundation reflects the vision of Henry R. Luce and Clare Boothe Luce, as well as the interests of subsequent generations of the Luce family. These interests include opportunities for women in science, mathematics and engineering through the Clare Boothe Luce Program; increased understanding between Asia and the United States; scholarship in American art; deepening American understanding of religion and international policy issues; theological scholarship linking the academy to religious communities; environmental and public policy programs; and the creation of new intellectual resources at colleges and universities.