Made possible by
President Lincoln's signing of the
Morrill Act in 1862, the University of California was founded in 1868 as the state's first land-grant university, inheriting the land and facilities of the private
College of California and the federal-funding eligibility of a public agricultural, mining, and mechanical arts college.[30] The Organic Act states that the "University shall have for its design, to provide instruction and thorough and complete education in all departments of science, literature and art, industrial and professional pursuits, and general education, and also special courses of instruction in preparation for the professions."[31][32]
Ten faculty members and forty male students made up the fledgling university when it opened in Oakland in 1869.[33]Frederick Billings, a trustee of the College of California, suggested that a new campus site north of Oakland be named in honor of
Anglo-Irish philosopher
George Berkeley.[34] The university began admitting women the following year.[35] In 1870,
Henry Durant, founder of the College of California, became its first president. With the completion of North and
South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students.[36][37] The first female student to graduate was in 1874, admitted in the first class to include women in 1870.[38]
Beginning in 1891,
Phoebe Apperson Hearst funded several programs and new buildings and, in 1898, sponsored an international competition in
Antwerp, where French architect
Émile Bénard submitted the winning design for a campus master plan. Although the University of California system does not have an official
flagship campus, many scholars and experts consider Berkeley to be its unofficial flagship. It shares this unofficial status with the
University of California, Los Angeles.[39]
In the 1930s,
Ernest Orlando Lawrence helped establish the Radiation Laboratory (now
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and invented the
cyclotron, which won him the Nobel physics prize in 1939.[46] Using the cyclotron, Berkeley professors and Berkeley Lab researchers went on to discover sixteen
chemical elements—more than any other university in the world.[47][48] In particular, during World War II and following
Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to contract with the U.S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. Physics professor
J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942.[49][50] Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley founded and was then a partner in managing two other labs,
Los Alamos National Laboratory (1943) and
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1952).
In 1952, the
University of California reorganized itself into a system of semi-autonomous campuses, with each campus given a chancellor, and
Clark Kerr became Berkeley's first Chancellor, while
Robert Sproul remained in place as the President of the University of California.[51] Berkeley gained a worldwide reputation for
political activism in the 1960s. In 1964, the
Free Speech Movement organized student resistance to the university's restrictions on political activities on campus—most conspicuously, student activities related to the
Civil Rights Movement.[52][53]
The arrest in Sproul Plaza of
Jack Weinberg, a recent Berkeley alumnus and chair of Campus
CORE, prompted a series of student-led acts of formal remonstrance and civil disobedience that ultimately gave rise to the Free Speech Movement, which movement would prevail and serve as a precedent for student
opposition to America's involvement in the Vietnam War.[54][55][56] In 1982, the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) was established on campus with support from the
National Science Foundation and at the request of three Berkeley mathematicians—
Shiing-Shen Chern,
Calvin Moore, and
Isadore M. Singer. The institute is now widely regarded as a leading center for collaborative mathematical research, drawing thousands of visiting researchers from around the world each year.[57][58][59]
21st century
In the current century, Berkeley has become less politically active, although more liberal.[60][61] Democrats outnumber Republicans on the faculty by a ratio of nine to one, which is a ratio similar to that of American academia generally.[62] The school has become more focused on
STEM disciplines and fundraising.[63][64][65] In 2007, the
Energy Biosciences Institute was established with funding from
BP and Stanley Hall, a research facility and headquarters for the
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, opened. Supported by a grant from alumnus
James Simons, the
Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing was established in 2012. In 2015, Berkeley and its sister campus,
UCSF, established the
Innovative Genomics Institute to develop
CRISPR gene editing, and, in 2020, an anonymous donor pledged $252 million to help fund a new center for computing and data science. For the 2020 fiscal year, Berkeley set a fundraising record, receiving over $1 billion in gifts and pledges, and two years later, it broke that record, raising over $1.2 billion.[66][63][67][68]
Cal's
Memorial Stadium reopened in September 2012 after renovations. The university incurred a controversial $445 million of debt for the stadium and a new $153 million student athletic center, which it financed with the sale of special stadium endowment seats.[76] The roughly $18 million interest-only annual payments on the debt consumes 20 percent of Cal's athletics' budget; principal repayment begins in 2032 and is scheduled to conclude in 2113.[77]
On May 1, 2014, Berkeley was named one of fifty-five higher education institutions under investigation by the
U.S. Department of Education's
Office of Civil Rights "for possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual violence and harassment complaints" by the
White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.[78] Investigations continued into 2016, with hundreds of pages of records released in April 2016, showing a pattern of documented sexual harassment and firings of non-tenured staff.[79]
On July 25, 2019, Berkeley was removed from the
U.S. News Best Colleges Ranking for misreporting statistics. Berkeley had originally reported that its two-year average alumni giving rate for fiscal years 2017 and 2016 was 11.6 percent, U.S. News said. The school later told U.S. News the correct average alumni giving rate for the 2016 fiscal year was just 7.9 percent. The school incorrectly overstated its alumni giving data to U.S. News since at least 2014. The alumni giving rate accounts for five percent of the Best Colleges ranking.[80]
Berkeley community members have criticized UC Berkeley's increasing enrollment. Berkeley residents filed a lawsuit alleging that the university's expanding enrollment violated
California Environmental Quality Act and that the area lacked the infrastructure to support more students.[81] Critics of the lawsuit accused these community members of
NIMBYism.[82][83][84] In August 2021, a judge from the
Superior Court of Alameda County ruled in favor of the residents, and on March 3, 2022, the
California Supreme Court also ruled in favor of the residents, saying that the university needed to freeze its admission rates at 2020–2021 levels.[85] On March 11, 2022, state legislators released a proposal to change CEQA to exempt the university from its restrictions.[86] On March 14, Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law.[87] Berkeley has continued to face a housing shortage.[88]
Organization and administration
Name
Officially named the "University of California, Berkeley" it is often shortened to "Berkeley" in general reference or in an academic context (
Berkeley Law,
Berkeley Engineering,
Berkeley Haas,
Berkeley Public Health) and to "California" or "Cal" particularly when referring to its athletic teams (
California Golden Bears).[11][12][89] In August 2022, a university task force was formed which recommended renaming the athletic identity to "Cal Berkeley" to further tie the athletic brand to academic prestige, and reduce public confusion.[90]
Governance
The University of California is governed by a twenty-six member
Board of Regents, eighteen of whom are appointed by the
Governor of California to 12-year terms. The board also has seven ex officio members, a student regent, and a non-voting student regent-designate.[91] Prior to 1952, Berkeley was the University of California, so the university president was also Berkeley's chief executive. In 1952, the university reorganized itself into a system of semi-autonomous campuses, with each campus having its own chief executive, a chancellor, who would, in turn, report to the president of the university system. Twelve vice-chancellors report directly to Berkeley's chancellor, and the deans of the fifteen colleges and schools report to the executive vice chancellor and provost, Berkeley's chief academic officer.[92] Twenty-three presidents and chancellors have led Berkeley since its founding.[93][51]
With the exception of government contracts, public support is apportioned to Berkeley and the other campuses of the University of California system through the UC Office of the President and accounts for 12 percent of Berkeley's total revenues.[94] Berkeley has long benefited from private philanthropy and more recently, alumni and their foundations have given to the university for operations and capital expenditures.[95] Berkeley has benefited from benefactors beyond its alumni ranks, notable among which are
Mark Zuckerberg and
Priscilla Chan;
Vitalik Buterin,
Patrick Collison,
John Collison, the
Ron Conway family, Crankstart, Elad Gil and Jennifer Huang Gil,
Daniel Gross,
Dustin Moskovitz and
Cari Tuna, and Hemant and Jessica Taneja, along with
Jane Street principals Matt Berger, Craig Falls, Rob Granieri, James McClave, and Adam Winkel;
BP; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, billionaire
Sir Li Ka-Shing, Israeli-Russian billionaire
Yuri Milner,
Thomas and Stacey Siebel,
Sanford and Joan Weill, and professor
Gordon Rausser ($50 million gift in 2020).[95] Hundreds of millions of dollars have been given anonymously.[96] The 2008–13 "Campaign for Berkeley" raised $3.13 billion from 281,855 donors, and the "Light the Way" campaign, which concluded at the end of 2023, has raised over $6.2 billion.[97]
Academics
Faculty and departments
Berkeley is a large, primarily residential research university with a majority of its enrolment in undergraduate programs but also offering a comprehensive doctoral program.[14] The university has been
accredited by the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission since 1949.[98] The university operates on a
semester calendar and awarded 8,725 bachelor's, 3,286 master's or professional and 1,272 doctoral degrees in 2018–2019.[99]
There are 1,789 full-time and 886 part-time faculty members among the university's academic enterprise which is organized into fifteen colleges and schools that comprise 180 departments and 80 interdisciplinary units offering over 350 degree programs. Colleges serve both undergraduate and graduate students, while schools are generally graduate only, though some offer undergraduate majors or minors:
Requirements for undergraduate degrees include an entry-level writing requirement before enrollment (typically fulfilled by minimum scores on standardized admissions exams such as the SAT or ACT), completing coursework on "American History and Institutions" before or after enrollment by taking an introductory class, passing an "American Cultures Breadth" class at Berkeley, as well as requirements for reading and composition and specific requirements declared by the department and school.[102]
Doe Library serves as the library system's reference, periodical, and administrative center, while most of the main collections reside in the subterranean Gardner Main Stacks and Moffitt Undergraduate Library. The
Bancroft Library, which has over 400,000 printed volumes and 70 million manuscripts, pictures, and maps, maintains special collections that document the history of the western part of North America, with an emphasis on California, Mexico and Central America. The Bancroft Library also houses the Mark Twain Papers,[104] the Oral History Center,[105] the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri[106] and the University Archives.[107]
The 2018–19 Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) rated Berkeley the top public university in the nation and 4th overall based on quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, publications, influence, and citations.[116]
For 2021,
QS "World University Rankings: USA" placed Berkeley 4th among all US universities and 1st among publics.[117]
In the 2023–2024 U.S. News & World Report national university rankings, Berkeley was the top public school and 15th overall.[119]
Global
In 2017, the
Nature Index ranked the university the 9th largest contributor to papers published in 82 leading journals.[120][121]
For 2020–21, the Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) ranked the university 12th in the world based on quality of education, alumni employment, quality of faculty, and research performance.[122]
Past rankings
In his memoirs,
Clark Kerr records Berkeley's rise in the rankings (according to the
National Academies) during the 20th century. The school's first ranking in 1906 placed it among the top six schools ("Big Six") in the nation. In 1934, it ranked second, tied with
Columbia and the
University of Chicago, behind only
Harvard; in 1957, it was ranked as the only school second to Harvard. In 1964, Berkeley was named the "best balanced distinguished university", meaning the school had not only the most top departments but also the highest percentage of top ranking departments in its school. The school in 1993 was the only remaining member of the original 1906 "Big Six", along with Harvard; in that year Berkeley ranked first.[123]
The 2010
United States National Research Council Rankings identified Berkeley as having the highest number of top-ranked doctoral programs in the nation. Berkeley doctoral programs that received a #1 ranking included English, German, Political Science, Geography, Agricultural and Resource Economics, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Genetics, Genomics, Epidemiology, Plant Biology, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.[133]
For Fall 2022, Berkeley's total enrollment was 45,745: 32,831 undergraduate and 12,914 graduate students, with women accounting for 56% of undergraduates and 49% of graduate and professional students. It had 128,226 freshman applicants and accepted 14,614 (11.4%). Among enrolled freshman, the average unweighted GPA was 3.90.[135]
Berkeley students are eligible for a variety of public and private financial aid. Inquiries are processed through the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office, although schools such as the Haas School of Business[140] and
Berkeley Law,[141] have their own financial aid offices.
Carcinogens – Identified chemicals that damage DNA. The
Ames test was described in a series of papers in 1973 by
Bruce Ames and his group at the university.
Covalent bond –
Gilbert N. Lewis in 1916 described the sharing of electron pairs between atoms, and invented the Lewis notation to describe the mechanisms.
Much of the UC Berkeley campus is in the city limits of
Berkeley with portion of the property extending into
Oakland.[162] The Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232-acres, though the "central campus" occupies only the low-lying western 178-acres of this area. Of the remaining acres, approximately 200-acres are occupied by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; other facilities above the main campus include the
Lawrence Hall of Science and several research units, notably the
Space Sciences Laboratory, the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an 800-acre (320-hectare) ecological preserve, the
University of California Botanical Garden and a recreation center in Strawberry Canyon. Portions of the mostly undeveloped, eastern area of the campus are actually within the
City of Oakland; these portions extend from the
Claremont Resort north through the
Panoramic Hill neighborhood to
Tilden Park.[163]
To the west of the central campus is the
downtown business district of Berkeley; to the northwest is the neighborhood of North Berkeley, including the so-called
Gourmet Ghetto, a commercial district known for high quality dining due to the presence of such world-renowned restaurants as
Chez Panisse. Immediately to the north is a quiet residential neighborhood known as
Northside with a large graduate student population;[164] situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the
Berkeley Hills. Immediately southeast of campus lies fraternity row and beyond that the
Clark Kerr Campus and an upscale residential area named
Claremont. The
area south of the university includes student housing and
Telegraph Avenue, one of Berkeley's main shopping districts with stores, street vendors and restaurants catering to college students and tourists. In addition, the university also owns land to the northwest of the main campus, a married student housing complex in the nearby town of Albany ("Albany Village" and the "Gill Tract"), and a
field research station several miles to the north in
Richmond, California.
The campus is home to several museums including the
University of California Museum of Paleontology, the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the
Lawrence Hall of Science. The Museum of Paleontology, found in the lobby of the Valley Life Sciences Building, showcases a variety of dinosaur fossils including a complete cast of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The campus also offers resources for innovation and entrepreneurship, such as the Big Ideas Competition, the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and the Berkeley Haas Innovation Lab.[165] The campus is also home to the
University of California Botanical Garden, with more than 12,000 individual species.
360-degree-view of the UC Berkeley campus
Architecture
What is considered the historic campus today was the result of the 1898 "International Competition for the
Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California," funded by
William Randolph Hearst's mother and initially held in the Belgian city of
Antwerp; eleven finalists were judged again in San Francisco in 1899.[166] The winner was Frenchman
Émile Bénard, who refused to personally supervise the implementation of his plan and the task was subsequently given to architecture professor
John Galen Howard. Howard designed over twenty buildings, which set the tone for the campus up until its expansion in the 1950s and 1960s.
Flowing into the main campus are two branches of
Strawberry Creek. The south fork enters a culvert upstream of the recreational complex at the mouth of Strawberry Canyon and passes beneath
California Memorial Stadium before appearing again in Faculty Glade. It then runs through the center of the campus before disappearing underground at the west end of campus. The north fork appears just east of
University House and runs through the glade north of the Valley Life Sciences Building, the original site of the Campus Arboretum.
Trees in the area date from the founding of the university. The campus features numerous wooded areas, including:
Founders' Rock, Faculty Glade, Grinnell Natural Area, and the
Eucalyptus Grove, which is both the tallest stand of such trees in the world and the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America.[170] The campus sits on the
Hayward Fault, which runs directly through California Memorial Stadium.[171]
Student life and traditions
The official university mascot is
Oski the Bear, who debuted in 1941. Previously, live bear cubs were used as mascots at Memorial Stadium until it was decided in 1940 that a costumed mascot would be a better alternative. Named after the
Oski-wow-wow yell, he is cared for by the Oski Committee, whose members have exclusive knowledge of the identity of the costume-wearer.[172] The
University of California Marching Band, which has served the university since 1891, performs at every home football game and at select road games as well. A smaller subset of the Cal Band, the Straw Hat Band, performs at basketball games, volleyball games, and other campus and community events.[173]
The UC Rally Committee, formed in 1901, is the official guardian of California's Spirit and Traditions. Wearing their traditional blue and gold rugbies, Rally Committee members can be seen at all major sporting and spirit events. Committee members are charged with the maintenance of the six Cal flags, the large California banner overhanging the Memorial Stadium Student Section and
Haas Pavilion, the California Victory Cannon, Card Stunts and
The Big "C" among other duties. The Rally Committee is also responsible for safekeeping of the
Stanford Axe when it is in Cal's possession.[174]
Overlooking the main Berkeley campus from the foothills in the east, The Big "C" is an important symbol of California school spirit. The Big "C" has its roots in an early 20th-century campus event called "Rush", which pitted the freshman and sophomore classes against each other in a race up Charter Hill that often developed into a wrestling match. It was eventually decided to discontinue Rush and, in 1905, the freshman and sophomore classes banded together in a show of unity to build "the Big C."[175]
Cal students invented the college football tradition of
card stunts. Then known as Bleacher Stunts, they were first performed during the 1910
Big Game and consisted of two stunts: a picture of the Stanford Axe and a large blue "C" on a white background. The tradition is continued today by the Rally Committee in the Cal
student section and incorporates complicated motions, for example tracing the Cal script logo on a blue background with an imaginary yellow pen.[176]
The California Victory Cannon, placed on
Tightwad Hill overlooking the stadium, is fired before every football home game, after every score, and after every Cal victory. First used in the 1963 Big Game, it was originally placed on the sidelines before moving to Tightwad Hill in 1971. The only time the cannon ran out of ammunition was during a game against
Pacific in 1991, when Cal scored 12 touchdowns.[177] The Cal Mic Men, a standard at home football games, has recently expanded to involve basketball and volleyball. The traditional role comes from students holding megaphones and yelling, but now includes microphones, a dedicated platform during games, and the direction of the entire student section.[178]
Berkeley students are offered a variety of housing options, including university-owned or affiliated residences, private residences, fraternities and sororities, and cooperative housing (co-ops). Berkeley students, and those of other local schools, have the option of living in one of the twenty cooperative houses participating in the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC), a
nonprofithousing cooperative network consisting of 20 residences and 1250 member-owners.[179]
Fraternities and sororities
About three percent of undergraduate men and nine percent of undergraduate women—or 3,400 of total undergraduates—are active in Berkeley's Greek system.[180] University-sanctioned fraternities and sororities comprise over 60 houses affiliated with four Greek councils.[181][182]
Student-run organizations
Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC)
The
Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) is the official
student association that controls funding for student groups and organizes on-campus student events. The two main political parties are "Student Action"[183] and "CalSERVE".[184] The organization was founded in 1887 and has an annual operating budget of $1.7 million (excluding the budget of the Graduate Assembly of the ASUC), in addition to various investment assets. Its alumni include multiple State Senators, Assemblymembers, and White House Administration officials.[185]
Media and publications
Berkeley's student-run online television station,
CalTV, was formed in 2005 and broadcasts online. It is run by students with a variety of backgrounds and majors. Since the mid-2010s, it has been a program of the
ASUC.[186] Berkeley's independent student-run newspaper is The Daily Californian. Founded in 1871, The Daily Cal became independent in 1971 after the campus administration fired three senior editors for encouraging readers to take back
People's Park. The Daily Californian has both a print and online edition. Berkeley's FM
Student radio station,
KALX, broadcasts on 90.7 MHz. It is run largely by volunteers, including both students and community members. Berkeley also features an assortment of student-run publications:
There are ninety-four political student groups on campus, including MEChXA de UC Berkeley, Berkeley
ACLU, Berkeley Students for Life, Campus Greens, The Sustainability Team (STEAM), the
Berkeley Student Food Collective, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Cal Berkeley Democrats, and the Berkeley College Republicans.[187] The Residence Hall Assembly (RHA) is the student-led umbrella organization that oversees event planning, legislation, sponsorships and other activities for over 7,200 on-campus undergraduate residents.[188]
Berkeley students also run a number of consulting groups, including the Berkeley Group, founded in 2003 and affiliated with the Haas School.[189] Students from various concentrations are recruited and trained to work on pro-bono consulting engagements with actual nonprofit clients. Berkeley Consulting, founded in 1996, has served over 140 companies across the high-tech, retail, banking, and non-profit sectors.[190]
ImagiCal[191] has been the college chapter of the
American Advertising Federation at Berkeley since the late 1980s. The team competes annually in the National Student Advertising Competition, with students from disparate majors working together on a marketing case underwritten by a corporate sponsor. The
Berkeley Forum is a nonpartisan student organization that hosts panels, debates, and speeches across a variety of fields.[192] Past speakers include
SenatorRand Paul, entrepreneur and venture capitalist
Peter Thiel, and
Khan Academy founder
Salman Khan.
Democratic Education at Cal, or DeCal, is a program that promotes the creation of professor-sponsored, student-facilitated classes.[193] DeCal arose out of the 1960s
Free Speech movement and was officially established in 1981. The program offers around 150 courses on a vast range of subjects that appeal to the student community, including classes on the
Rubik's Cube,
blockchain,
web design, metamodernism,
cooking, Jewish art,
3D animation, and
bioprinting.[194]
The campus is home to several
a cappella groups, including Drawn to Scale, Artists in Resonance, Berkeley Dil Se, the
UC Men's Octet, the
California Golden Overtones, DeCadence, and Noteworthy. The
University of California Men's Octet was founded in 1948. Since 1967, students and staff jazz musicians have had an opportunity to perform and study with the
University of California Jazz Ensembles. For several decades it hosted the Pacific Coast Collegiate Jazz Festival, part of the American Collegiate Jazz Festival, a competitive forum for student musicians. PCCJF brought jazz artists including
Hubert Laws,
Sonny Rollins,
Freddie Hubbard, and
Ed Shaughnessy to the Berkeley campus as performers. Berkeley also hosts other performing arts groups in comedy, dance, acting and instrumental music.
Engineering Student Teams
Given UC Berkeley's
STEM education and its proximity to Silicon Valley, there are a variety of student-run engineering teams that focus on winning design and engineering competitions.
Berkeley has two prominent
amateur rocketry teams: Space Enterprise at Berkeley (SEB)[195] and Space Technologies and Rocketry (STAR).[196] Both have launched solid-fuel
sounding rockets and are currently developing
liquid propellant rockets.
The university also has two
Formula SAE teams: Berkeley Formula Racing[197] and Formula Electric Berkeley.[198] Both of these teams participate in Formula SAE–run competitions, with the former focusing on internal combustion engines and the latter on electric motors. Berkeley has a number of other vehicle teams, including CalSol,[199] CalSMV,[200] and Human Powered Vehicle.[201]
The university's athletic teams are known as the
California Golden Bears, often shortened to "Cal Bears" or just "Cal," and were historically members of the
NCAA Division IPac-12 Conference (Pac-12). Cal is also a member of the
Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in several sports not sponsored by the Pac-12 and the
America East Conference in women's
field hockey. In 2024, Cal joined the
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).[202] The first school colors, established in 1873 by a committee of students, were
Yale Blue and gold.[203][204] Yale Blue was originally chosen because many of the university's inaugural faculty were Yale graduates, including Henry Durant, its first president. Blue and gold were specified and made the official colors of the university and the state colors of California in 1955.[203][205] In 2014, the athletic department specified a darker blue.[206][207]
The
California Golden Bears have won national championships in baseball (2), men's basketball (2), men's crew (15), women's crew (3), football (5), men's golf (1), men's gymnastics (4), men's lacrosse (1), men's rugby (26), softball (1), men's swimming & diving (4), women's swimming & diving (3), men's tennis (1), men's track & field (1), and men's water polo (13). Students and alumni have also won
207 Olympic medals.[208]
California finished in first place[209] in the 2007–08 Fall U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup standings (Now the
NACDA Directors' Cup), a competition measuring the best overall collegiate athletic programs in the country, with points awarded for national finishes in NCAA sports. Cal finished the 2007–08 competition in seventh place with 1119 points.[210]
Most recently, California finished in third place in the 2010–11 NACDA Directors' Cup with 1219.50 points, finishing behind Stanford and Ohio State. This is California's highest ever finish in the Director's Cup.[211] The Golden Bears' traditional arch-rival is the
Stanford Cardinal, and the most anticipated sporting event between the two universities is the annual football match dubbed the
Big Game, celebrated with spirit events on both campuses. Since 1933, the winner of the Big Game has been awarded custody of
the Stanford Axe. Other sporting games between these rivals have related names such as the Big Splash (water polo) or the Big Kick (soccer).[212]
Glenn T. Seaborg, a Nobel laureate in chemistry who discovered or co-discovered ten chemical elements at Berkeley and served as Chancellor from 1958 to 1961.[223][224]
Berkeley alumni have developed a number of key technologies associated with the
personal computer and the Internet.[267]Unix was created by alumnus
Ken Thompson (BS 1965, MS 1966) along with colleague
Dennis Ritchie. Alumni such as
L. Peter Deutsch[268][269][270] (PhD 1973),
Butler Lampson (PhD 1967), and
Charles P. Thacker (BS 1967)[271] worked with Ken Thompson on
Project Genie and then formed the ill-fated
US Department of Defense-funded Berkeley Computer Corporation (BCC), which was scattered throughout the Berkeley campus in non-descript offices to avoid anti-war protestors.[272] After BCC failed, Deutsch, Lampson, and Thacker joined
Xerox PARC, where they developed a number of pioneering computer technologies, culminating in the
Xerox Alto that inspired the
Apple Macintosh. In particular, the Alto used a
computer mouse, which had been invented by
Doug Engelbart (BEng 1952, PhD 1955). Thompson, Lampson, Engelbart, and Thacker[273] all later received a Turing Award. Also at Xerox PARC was Ronald Schmidt (BS 1966, MS 1968, PhD 1971), who became known as "the man who brought
Ethernet to the masses."[274] Another Xerox PARC researcher,
Charles Simonyi (BS 1972), pioneered the first
WYSIWIGword processor program and was recruited personally by
Bill Gates to join the fledgling company known as
Microsoft to create
Microsoft Word. Simonyi later became the first repeat
space tourist, blasting off on Russian
Soyuz rockets to work at the
International Space Station orbiting the Earth.
Alumni have collectively won at least twenty-five
Emmy Awards: Jon Else (BA 1968) for cinematography;
Andrew Schneider (BA 1973) for screenwriting; Linda Schacht (BA 1966, MA 1981), two for broadcast journalism;[297][298] Christine Chen (dual BA's 1990), two for broadcast journalism;[299] Kristen Sze (BA), two for broadcast journalism;[300]Kathy Baker (BA 1977), three for acting; Ken Milnes (BS 1977), four for broadcasting technology; and
Leroy Sievers (BA),[301] twelve for production.
Elisabeth Leamy is the recipient of thirteen
Emmy awards.[302][303][304]
Kendall Ross Bean became a master piano rebuilder and concert pianist, Bean first performed on a piano he rebuilt in one of the first classical music videos to be broadcast across the United States on the A&E Network which in 1985 had 18 million cable viewers. This broadcast coincided with MTV emerging as a medium for record production companies to use music videos to promote the albums of Rock and Pop stars. The novelty of a classical music video featuring a solo pianist and the inside view of piano hammers hitting strings, contrasted to the high production rock music videos caught media attention from coast to coast. The video was titled:
Kendall Ross Bean: Chopin Polonaise in A Flat. Karen Earle Lile, niece of
Tony Terran became the Art Director/Executive Producer for the
USPS Building Bridges Special Postal Cancellation Series and a Talk Show host for Sail Sport Talk on
Sports Byline USA, a record producer [308][309] at
Fantasy Studios and the historian who discovered the
provenance of the Lost Lennon piano,[310] afterwards known as the
Lennon-
Ono-
Green-
Warhol piano.[311]
^
ab"Our Name".
The Berkeley Brand Manual(PDF). Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley: Office of Communications and Public Affairs. June 2019. p. 34. Archived from
the original(PDF) on June 7, 2020. Retrieved June 23, 2020.
Thoenig, Jean-Claude (August 31, 2023).
"Organizational Governance and the Production of Academic Quality: Lessons from Two Top U.S. Research Universities". Minerva. 52 (4). Springer: 381–417.
JSTOR43548922. "MIT and UCB were selected as two consistently top ranked universities internationally speaking, not only in terms of prestige in the eyes of international public opinion but also in terms of actual outputs as measured by metrics of excellence. They enjoy a very long tenure in the first decile whatever the classification used, and despite the fact that ranking agencies do not allocate the same weight to excellence and prestige indicators. Once they reach the top, they seem to remain there forever, despite increasingly tough competition from research universities who all vie to join the academic heavens"
^"History of UC Berkeley". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from
the original on November 23, 2010. Founded in the wake of the gold rush by leaders of the newly established 31st state, the University of California's flagship campus at Berkeley has become one of the preeminent universities in the world.
^Berdahl, Robert (October 8, 1998).
"The Future of Flagship Universities". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from
the original on May 11, 2011. The issue I want to talk about tonight is the future of "flagship" universities, institutions like the University of Texas at Austin, or Texas A&M at College Station, or the University of California, Berkeley. This is not an easy topic to talk about for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that those of us in "systems" of higher education are frequently actively discouraged from using the term "flagship" to refer to our campuses because it is seen as hurtful to the self-esteem of colleagues at other institutions in our systems.
^Wollenberg, Charles (2002).
"Chapter 2: Tale of Two Towns". Berkeley, A City in History. Berkeley Public Library. Archived from
the original on June 12, 2009. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
Medina, Jennifer (July 19, 2018).
"You've Heard of Berkeley. Is Merced the Future of the University of California?". The New York Times. Retrieved June 22, 2020. The disparity between the state's population and its university enrollment is most stark at the state's flagship campuses: at University of California, Los Angeles, Latinos make up about 21 percent of all students; at Berkeley, they account for less than 13 percent.
^Richard Moll in his book Public Ivys: A Guide to America's best public undergraduate colleges and universities (1985)
^Greene, Howard R.; Greene, Matthew W. (2001). The public ivies: America's flagship public universities (1st ed.). New York: Cliff Street Books.
ISBN978-0060934590.
^"Her Norwegian heritage drew her to projects with the Norwegian Consulate in San Francisco and the Norwegian American Cultural Society, and she hosted a party for Crown Prince Haakon Magnus when he graduated from UC Berkeley in 1999."Carolyne Zinko (July 3, 2008).
"Sigrun Corrigan, Bay Area arts patron, dies". San Francisco Chronicle.
^Böggemann, Markus; Purschke, G.; Westheide, Wilfried (2019). Handbook of Zoology, Volume 1: Annelida Basal Groups and Pleistoannelida, Sedentaria I. De Gruyter. pp. 19, 27-29.
ISBN9783110291681.
OCLC1399979202.
^Hartman, Olga (1933). "Revision of the California species of polychaetous annelids of the family Spionidae". M.A. University of California.
OCLC25496285.
^Hartman, Olga (1936). "Polychaetous annelids of the littoral zone of California". Ph. D. University of California.
OCLC18237529.
^The Gap was founded by
Donald Fisher (BS 1951), who served as its inaugural president and chairman of the board.
"Business Visionary Don Fisher, BS 51". Obituaries. Cal Business (Fall 2009). University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business. Archived from
the original on April 17, 2016. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
^RedOctane was cofounded by brothers Charles Huang (BA 1992 ) and Kai Huang (BA CS 1994). Don Steinberg (October 1, 2008).
"Just Play – Guitar Hero".
Inc Magazine.
^VMware was cofounded by Edward Wang (BS EECS 1983, MS 1988, PhD 1994), along with Diane Greene (MS CS 1988) and her husband Mendel Rosenblum (MS 1989, PhD 1992).
"VMware Leadership". VMware.
^KeyHole Inc (known now as Google Earth) was cofounded by John Hanke (MBA 1996).
"Haas Alumnus Maps the Future at Google Earth". University of California, Berkeley. Archived from
the original on January 18, 2010. Retrieved February 18, 2010.
^Eric Schmidt (MS 1979, PhD 1982) has been the CEO of
Google since 2001. Pescovitz, David (May 27, 2014).
"Eric Schmidt Searches and Finds Success (Again)". Lab Notes: Research from the Berkeley College of Engineering. 3 (1 (Jan/Feb 2003)). College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
^Paul Jacobs (BS 1984, MS 1986, PhD 1989 EECS) has been the CEO of Qualcomm since 2005. Abby Cohn (November 2008).
"Mobile Phone Metamorphosis". "Innovations" by UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Archived from
the original on June 9, 2010. Retrieved May 17, 2010.
^"Berkeley Unix worked so well that
DARPA chose it for the preferred 'universal computing environment' to link
ARPANET research nodes, thus setting in place an essential piece of infrastructure for the later growth of the Internet. An entire generation of computer scientists cut their teeth on Berkeley Unix. Without it, the Net might well have evolved into a shape similar to what it is today, but with it, the Net exploded." Andrew Leonard (May 16, 2000).
"BSD Unix: Power to the people, from the code". Salon.com. Archived from
the original on December 4, 2005.
^L. Peter Deutsch is profiled on pages 30, 31, 43, 53, 54, 66 (which mentions Deutsch beginning his freshman year at Berkeley), and page 87 in the following book:
Steven Levy (January 2, 2001). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
Penguin Books.
ISBN0-385-19195-2.
^Pei-Yuan Wei's contributions are profiled on pages 56, 64, 68, and 83, in the
World Wide Web creator's autobiography (
Tim Berners-Lee (November 7, 2001). Weaving the Web. Collins Business.
ISBN0-06-251586-1.)
^"General Walton H. Walker had ordered her out of
Korea..... Like many another soldier, old and young, General Walker was convinced that women do not belong in a combat zone... General
Douglas MacArthur reversed Walker's ruling. To the Herald Tribune, MacArthur sent a soothing telegram: 'Ban on women correspondents in Korea has been lifted. Marguerite Higgins is held in highest professional esteem by everyone.'"
"The Press: Last Word". Time. July 31, 1950. Archived from
the original on September 30, 2007.
^"One-of-a-Kind Recording Project Fills Fantasy Studios: Karen Lile, an independent executive producer and co-owner of Piano Finders brings together Grammy winners and top producers for one special benefit album". Music Trades Magazine. Published continuously since 1890 (The Global Issue): 40–42. December 2018.