Harvard Math Graduate Named 2025 Hertz Fellow

Arav Karighattam, a ’24 Harvard math graduate, is one of 19 chosen recipients of the 2025 Hertz Fellows. In its announcement, the Hertz Foundation emphasized his recent paper, in which he determined the ranks of members of a challenging family of elliptic curves using the theory of Heegner points. Karighattam presented his work at the conference “Mordell’s Conjecture 100 Years Later” at MIT as the youngest speaker among graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members.

“I am honored to receive the Hertz fellowship, which will provide the flexibility for me to embark on challenging fundamental questions in mathematics,” Karighattam said. “I am looking forward to being a part of the Hertz community and connecting with passionate and motivated scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to address global challenges.”

“Hertz Fellows embody the promise of future scientific breakthroughs, major engineering achievements and thought leadership that is vital to our future,” said Stephen Fantone, chair of the Hertz Foundation board of directors. “The newest recipients will direct research teams, serve in leadership positions in our government and take the helm of major corporations and startups that impact our communities and the world.”

Karighattam received a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in mathematics with highest honors from Harvard and was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize for outstanding research in his undergraduate senior thesis. He will begin his doctoral studies in mathematics at MIT. Karighattam is passionate about algebraic number theory and arithmetic geometry, and seeks to understand the mysteries underlying the structure of solutions to Diophantine equations.

The Hertz Fellowship grants five years of funding for doctoral studies, as well as access to mentoring, events, and networking. The 19 new fellows will join a group of more than 1,300 Hertz Fellows around the world.