After attending high school in Amsterdam, he enrolled at Delft University of Technology in 1919 and received his MSc degree in electrical engineering in 1924.
At the same time, he attended night classes in Mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh, where he became an authority in problems on mechanics and vibration and received a doctorate in 1939.
[4] In 1930–1931 he studied at the University of Göttingen where he collaborated in the laboratory of Ludwig Prandtl (whose fellow Oscar Carl Gustav Titens previously worked for Westinghouse).
From 1932 to 1945 he taught at Harvard University and took part in the organization of the International Congress of Applied Mechanics in Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1938.
[6] Jacob Pieter Den Hartog died at the age of 87 on March 17, 1989 in Hanover, New Hampshire.