University of California, Berkeley Facts for Kids

Sather Tower looking out over the San Francisco Bay and Mount Tamalpais.

The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major university in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The university occupies 6651 acres with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres.

The University was founded in 1868 when the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College merged. Berkeley was a founding member of the Association of American Universities and 61 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as faculty, researchers and alumni. Berkeley physicists worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and the university now manages the nation's two principal nuclear weapons laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Berkeley student-athletes compete intercollegiately as the California Golden Bears. A member of both the Pacific-12 Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation in the NCAA, Cal students have won national titles in many sports, including football, men's basketball, baseball, softball, water polo, rugby and crew. In addition, they have won over 100 Olympic medals. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are Berkeley blue and California gold.

Images for kids

View from Memorial Glade of Sather Tower (the Campanile), the center of Berkeley—the ring of its bells and clock can be heard from all over campus.
Wheeler Hall, home to Berkeley's largest lecture hall, was the location of a Nobel Prize conferral during WWII.
The north facade of Doe Library, designed by John Galen Howard, with Memorial Glade in the foreground.
The Morrison Library, a reading room located in Doe Library, often is used to host speeches and panels on campus.
The on-campus University of California Museum of Paleontology hosts a life-size replica of a T-rex.
Sather Gate, connecting Sproul Plaza to the inner campus, was a center of the Free Speech Movement.
The Doe Library, Bancroft Library, and Sather Tower looking south.
he UC Botanical Garden, located in the Berkeley Hills and by the Berkeley Lab.
South Hall (1873), one of the two original buildings of the University of California, still stands on the Berkeley campus
he south fork of Strawberry Creek, as seen between Dwinelle Hall and Lower Sproul Plaza.
Fans atop Tightwad Hill watch the Cal Band, with views of the stadium and the San Francisco Bay.
The International House was opened in 1930 with the funding of John D. Rockefeller.
Bowles Hall, a co-ed residential college, neighbors the Hearst Greek Theatre.
Clark Kerr Residential Campus
UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra
The base of the California Memorial Stadium.
The Cal Bears face off against the Stanford Cardinal in the Big Game.
The computer mouse was invented by Turing Award laureate Doug Engelbart, BEng 1952, PhD 1955
Tonika Sealy-Thompson appointed Barbados' Ambassador to Brazil
Robert Laughlin, BA 1972, Nobel laureate
Turing Award laureate Ken Thompson (left), BS 1965, MS 1966, and fellow laureate and colleague Dennis Ritchie (right), created Unix together
Robert Penn Warren, MA 1927 – novelist and poet, who received the Pulitzer Prize three times
Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning actress Kathy Baker, BA 1977
Earl Warren, BA 1912, JD 1914, 14th Chief Justice of the United States, 30th Governor of California
Steven Chu, PhD 1976, Nobel laureate and former United States Secretary of Energy
Jennifer Granholm, BA 1984, First female Governor of Michigan
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, BA 1950, 4th President of Pakistan, 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan
Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy, 22nd United States Secretary of Labor
Christina Romer, Professor of Economics, 25th Chairperson of the President's Council of Economic Advisers
Steve Wozniak, BS 1986, cofounder of Apple Inc.
Gordon Moore, BS 1950, cofounder of semiconductor company Intel
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr, BA 1961, Governor of California, former California Attorney General
Gregory Peck, BA 1939, Academy Award–winning actor
Natalie Coughlin, BA 2005, multiple gold medal-winning Olympic swimmer
Haakon Magnus, Crown Prince of Norway, BA 1999
Robert McNamara, BA 1937, President of World Bank (1968–81), United States Secretary of Defense (1961–68), President of Ford Motor Company (1960)
Daniel Kahneman, PhD 1961, awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect theory
Harold Urey, PhD 1923, Nobel laureate and discoverer of deuterium

University of California, Berkeley facts for kids

Images for kids

See also