John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 29, 1917. He graduated from Harvard University in 1940. Which led to some of his earlier political successes. Some came from when he ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1946, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. In 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier. During recuperation from spinal surgery, Kennedy completed Profiles in Courage (1956), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Kennedy attempted to win the Vice-president presidential nomination and failed; Kennedy began to plan for the presidential election in 1960.