University of California, Berkeley

                                                  

              University of California, Berkeley


The University of California, Berkeley  is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. It is the flagship campus of the University of California system, one of three parts in the state's public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.

It is considered by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings as one of six university brands that lead in world reputation rankings in 2015 and is ranked third on the U.S. News' 2015 Best Global Universities rankings conducted in the U.S. and nearly 50 other countries. The Academic Ranking of World Universities  also ranks the University of California, Berkeley fourth in the world overall, and first among public universities. It is broadly ranked first in science, third in engineering, and fifth in social sciences, with specific rankings of first in chemistry, first in physics, third in computer science, fourth in mathematics, and fourth in economics/business.  The university is also well known for producing a high number of entrepreneurs.

Established in 1868 as the result of the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, UC Berkeley is the oldest institution in the UC system and offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The University of California has been charged with providing both classical and  practical education for the state's people.  Cal co-manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Berkeley faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 72 Nobel Prizes nine Wolf Prizes, eight Fields Medals , 20 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships,  20 Academy Awards,11 Pulitzer Prizes and 105 Olympic gold medals To date, along with Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley scientists and researchers have discovered 16 chemical elements of the periodic table more than any other university in the world.  Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered element 118, 115 and 117  Berkeley is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and continues to have very high research activity with $730.7 million in research and development expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014.


In 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. Because it lacked sufficient funds to operate, it eventually merged with the state-run Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College to form the University of California, the first full-curriculum public university in the state.

Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869.  Frederick H. Billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley.  In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, became the first president. With the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 222 female students and held its first classes.

Beginning in 1891, Phoebe Apperson Hearst made several large gifts to Berkeley, funding a number of programs and new buildings, and sponsoring, in 1898, an international competition in Antwerp, Belgium, where French architect Émile Bénard submitted the winning design for a campus master plan. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, Davis.  By the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard.

Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958.  By 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments. UC Berkeley Students participate in a one-day Peace Strike opposing U.S. involvement in World War II. April 19, 1940

During World War II, following Glenn Seaborg's then-secret discovery of plutonium, Ernest Orlando Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory began to contract with the U.S. Army to develop the atomic bomb. UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942.  Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory    Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory   and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.