University of California, Berkeley

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[[fr:Universit� de Berkeley]]

The University of California, Berkeley (also UCB, Cal, Berkeley or UC Berkeley) is the flagship and original campus of the University of California, situated in Berkeley, California on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate. There are over 33,000 students enrolled and over 1,800 faculty. The current chancellor is Robert M. Berdahl.

Contents

History

In 1866, the land which is now the Berkeley campus was first purchased by the private College of California (established by Congregational minister Henry Durant in 1855). However, lacking the funds to operate, the College of California merged with state-run Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College, forming the University of California on March 23, 1868, with Durant becoming the first president. The university opened in 1869 with 10 faculty members and 38 students.

Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Berkeley campus enjoyed a golden age in the physical, chemical and biological sciences. During that period, researchers affiliated with the campus discovered all the chemical elements heavier than Uranium, garnering a number of Nobel Prizes for these efforts along the way. Two of the elements, Berkelium and Californium, were named in honor of the university. Another two, Lawrencium and Seaborgium, were named in honor of faculty members Ernest O. Lawrence and Glenn T. Seaborg.

The University gained notoriety worldwide nearly a century after its founding for the student body's active protests against American involvement in the Vietnam War. This period of social unrest on campus could be traced to the Free Speech Movement, which originated on the Berkeley campus in 1964 and inspired the political and moral outlook of a generation. On a lighter cultural note, The Graduate, a seminal novel and movie of the era, was filmed on location at the university and nearby buildings in 1966.

The Campus

The 1,232 acre main campus is shaped like a rectangle, with the two long sides running east to west. Except for designated open areas, the entire rectangle has been developed. Residence halls and administrative buildings spill out into the city of Berkeley, particularly to the south of the campus. On a hill to the east of the campus stands Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The campus layout was designed by Emile Benard, the winner of a world-wide competition sponsored by Phoebe Apperson Hearst in the early 1900s. The campus and surrounding community host a number of notable buildings by turn-of-the-20th-century architects Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan. Historic buildings on campus include Sproul Hall, Hearst Mining Building, the Faculty Club, Doe Library, California Hall, Gilman Hall, Hilgard Hall, Wheeler Hall, South Hall and Hearst Women's Gymnasium.

The oldest building on campus is South Hall. Together with North Hall (which was destroyed in a fire), it was one of the first two buildings on campus. The university's tallest building is 307 Sather Tower, a bell and clock tower also known as the Campanile (resembling the one in Venice).

See also : Evans Hall, Soda Hall, Cory Hall

Academics

Berkeley has graduated more students who go on to earn doctorates than any university in the country. UC Berkeley ranks third in the nation among all institutions with students who are National merit scholars.

The University currently boasts 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 101 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 8 Nobel Prize winners, 2 Fields Medal holders, 138 Guggenheim Fellows, 81 Fulbright Scholars, 3 Pulitzer Prize winners, 19 MacArthur Fellows, 62 Sloan Fellows among a bevy of distinguished faculty.

According to the National Research Council, Berkeley ranks first nationally in the number of graduate programs in the top 10 in their fields and first nationally in the number of "distinguished" programs for the scholarship of the faculty.

With about nine million volumes, Berkeley's library holdings rank 4th in North America, after the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Yale University.

Colleges and Schools

  • Haas School of Business
  • College of Chemistry
  • Graduate School of Education
  • College of Engineering
  • College of Environmenal Design
  • School of Information Management
  • Graduate School of Journalism
  • Law School (Boalt Hall)
  • College of Letters and Science
  • College of Natural Resources
  • School of Optometry
  • School of Public Health
  • The Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy
  • School of Social Welfare

Computer-related developments

Cal has also nurtured a number of key technologies associated with the early development of the Internet and the Open Source Software movement. The original Berkeley Software Distribution, commonly known as BSD Unix, was assembled in 1977 by Bill Joy as a PhD student in the computer science department. PostgreSQL emerged from faculty research begun in the late 1970s. SendMail was developed at Berkeley in 1981. BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain package) was written by a team of graduate students around the same time period. The Tcl programming language and the Tk GUI toolkit were developed by faculty member John Ousterhout in 1988. SPICE, a popular tool for IC Designers, was also invented at Berkeley under the direction of Professor Donald Pederson.

In an interesting example of the confluence of intellectual ideas, many of the arguments for the efficacy of Open Source software development, and of the Wikipedia project itself, find parallels in writings on urban planning and architecture published in the late 1970s by Christopher Alexander, a Berkeley professor of architecture. Across campus around that same time period, John Searle, a Berkeley professor of philosophy, introduced a celebrated critique of artificial intelligence using the metaphor of a Chinese Room.

List of research projects conducted at Berkeley:

Sports and Traditions

Cal Berkeley's sports teams compete as the California Golden Bears (often referred to as "Cal"). They participate in the NCAA's Division I-A, and in the Pacific Ten Conference. The annual football "Big Game" between the Bears and the rival Stanford Cardinal is the most important game on Cal's schedule. The winner of this game gains custody of the Axe.

Cal Berkeley's independent student-run newspaper is the Daily Californian.

The official school colors, Yale Blue and California Gold, were established in 1874. Yale Blue was chosen because most of the original faculty were Yale University graduates. Gold was selected to represent the Golden Gate, which the campus overlooks.

The official mascot is Oski T. Bear, who first debuted in 1941. Previously, live bear cubs were used as mascots at Memorial Stadium. It was decided in 1940 that a costumed mascot would be a better alternative to a live bear. Named after the Oski-wow-wow yell, he is cared for by the Oski Committee. The wearer of the costume is kept a secret. It is the tradition to hsve the basketball player with the largest feet to donate his shoes for Oski to wear.

Noted Cal alumni

External Links

References

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