The most recent, “The Promise of Berkeley” highlights Saul Perlmutter’s Nobel Prize in Physics. Dr. Perlmutter led one of two teams that simultaneously discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe. His success is founded in the University’s freedom given to faculty to do cutting edge research. But UC Berkeley has a long list of great accomplishments. Check these out!
a. Ernest O. Lawrence’s cyclotron launched the University’s Nobel Prize trajectory in 1939.
b. Gordon Moore co-founded Intel and created Moore’s Law, a driving force in high-tech.
c. Professor Walter Alvarez theorized that asteroid impacts led to the dinosaur’s decline.
d. Google guru Eric Schmidt helped develop Java at Sun Microsystems.
e. Pauline Esther Friedman, aka Abigail Van Buren, penned Dear Abby.
f. Rex Walheim flew on the space shuttle program’s final mission.
g. Charles Simonyi became the fifth space tourist aboard a Soyuz rocket.
h. Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi, discovered by a Cal team, in the oldest hominid ever found.
i. Tom Anderson, who co-founded My Space in 2003, became new users’ default “friend.”
j. Internet visionary Bill Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems
k. Ken Thompson co-developed the revolutionary Unix operating system.
l. John Battelle documented the dot.com boom as publisher of The Industry Standard and co-founding editor of Wired.
m. Jane McGonigal creates do-gooder alternate reality video games.
n. Magazine magnate Jann Wenner dropped out of Cal to start Rolling Stone.
o. Scott Adams inks Dilbert, our favorite cube-dwelling character.
p. Lance Ito presided over the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
q. Rose Bird was California’s first female chief justice. (Thank you, Jerry Brown, another grad)
r. Norman Mineta helped bring justice to Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
s. 24’s agent Jack Bauer, and Doonesbury’s Joanie Caucus (finctional, of course) got their degrees from Berkeley.
t. David Smith opened the country’s first free clinic, for youth flooding San Francisco for the Summer of Love.
u. Ida Jackson was the first African-American teacher in Oakland public schools.
v. Ed Roberts pioneered disability rights.
w. Mimi Silbert founded Delancey Street to help those who have hit rock bottom.
x. Charles Huang was the co-creator of Guitar Hero .
y. Donald Fisher filled a niche with The Gap.
z. Former quarterback Joe Ayoob threw the world’s longest paper airplane toss: 226 feet, 10 inches.
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