The Josephine de Karman Trust Fellowship Endowment was created by the Josephine de Karman Trust to provide fellowships to help graduate students complete their PhD dissertations.
The Josephine de Karman Trust was established by Theodore von Karman in 1954 in memory of his sister, who died in 1951. Theodore von Kármán (11 May 1881 – 6 May 1963), was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who worked in aeronautics and astronautics. He was responsible for crucial advances in aerodynamics, characterizing supersonic and hypersonic airflow; he is regarded as an outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
Apprehensive about developments in Europe regarding Nazism, in 1930 Karman accepted the directorship of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GAL LCI). In 1944 he and others affiliated with GALCIT founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This fellowship program is intended to provide financial support to help graduate students complete their PhD dissertations. The Fellowship program recognizes and assists students whose scholastic achievements reflect Professor von Karman’s high standards.