Founded in 1868, the
University of California, Berkeley (UCB) is a public research university and
the flagship institution of the ten research universities affiliated with the
University of California system.
Berkeley is one of the
14 founding members of the Association of American Universities and is home to
some world-renowned research institutes, including the Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute and the Space Sciences Laboratory.
Berkeley alumni,
faculty and researchers include 99 Nobel laureates, 23 Turing Award winners,
and 14 Pulitzer Prize winners. Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer led the
Manhattan project to create the first atomic bomb, while Berkeley’s Nobel
laureate Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron, through which UC Berkeley
scientists and researchers discovered 16 chemical elements of the periodic
table.
Berkeley started out
with little more than 40 students but, as the first full-curriculum university
in California, it quickly gained ground on its illustrious forebears. By the
early 1940s, it had grown substantially and was ranked second only to
Harvard.
During this decade,
Berkeley gained further prestige through its radiation laboratory, which was
instrumental in the project to develop an atomic bomb. During the
sixties, Berkeley gained a worldwide reputation for student activism, thanks to
the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and campus opposition to the Vietnam War. In
1969, the then governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus
"a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants",
though today’s students tend to be more politically moderate.
The Berkeley campus
encompasses approximately 1,232 acres of the bay area of San Francisco, with
many of its Beaux-Arts-style buildings recognized as California Historical
Landmarks.
Three quarters of its
40,000 students are undergraduates, giving life on campus a youthful feel in
vibrant, urban surrounds. Most undergraduate students live in residential
halls, where they can make friends, work and play in a safe environment
designed to enhance the academic experience through a culture of care.
There are also student
co-ops and not-for-profit housing cooperatives for Berkeley students, with over
1,300 students living in 17 houses and three apartment cooperatives around the
Berkeley campus. Students can play sports, and join clubs and societies
spanning every imaginable interest. On campus, students can visit the Lawrence
Hall of Science, watch sport at the newly-renovated California Memorial
Stadium, take in a noon concert, or stroll through Sproul Plaza, the social
heart of Berkeley campus.
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