Broida-Hirschfelder Graduate Fellowship Award Recipient

Award Recipient: 

Thuy-Ai Nguyen

Award Date: 

Monday, September 19, 2016

The Shoreliners' Broida-Hirschfelder Graduate Fellowship program is administered by the UCSB Graduate Division, and recipients are selected by a UCSB Shoreliners selection committee.  PhD students in several science and engineering departments are eligible. The UCSB Faculty Women's Club Broida-Hirschfelder Fellowship was first awarded in 1992. It was endowed by Ina Broida and Betty Hirschfelder, both long-time active members of the UCSB Faculty Women's Club. Ina Broida, wife of UCSB Physics professor Herbert Broida, was very active in women's issues in Santa Barbara. She passed away in 1992; however, she left a legacy of charitable donations and good works throughout the university and Santa Barbara communities. Elizabeth (Betty) Hirschfelder received a PhD in mathematics in 1930 and taught mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for 20 years under the name of Elizabeth Sokolnikoff. Along with her first husband, Ivan Sokolnikoff, she published several well-known books on mathematics. She later married Joseph O. Hirschfelder, a guiding force in modern theoretical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and an adjunct professor of Chemistry at UCSB. A participant in the U.S. effort to build the atomic bomb during World War II, Joe Hirschfelder received the nation's highest scientific honor, the National Medal of Science, from President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. Betty Hirschfelder died in 2002 at the age of 100. Thanks to Betty's great generosity, the Broida-Hirschfelder Endowment has received additional funding from her estate, which is expected to translate into more fellowships in future years. In addition, members of the then Faculty Women's Club, which transformed into the Shoreliners, have consistently donated to the fund.