dipity

From the invention of the canned fruit cocktail to the landmark Free Speech Movement, here are a few highlights from UC Berkeley's history reel.

Created by washingtonpost on Dec 9, 2011

Last updated: 12/09/11 at 09:19 AM

• Another Nobel Prize
  2011

  Physicist Saul Perlmutter becomes the university's 22nd Nobelist for disproving one of science's most basic assumptions — that the expansion of the universe is slowing down — and revealing a cosmological force known as "dark energy." (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/3-us-born-scientists-win-nobel-prize-in-physics/2011/10/04/gIQATIV3KL_story.html

• 'People's Perch'
  2006 to 2008

  For 21 months, a crew of protesters sat in the oak trees near Memorial Stadium to protest university expansion plans that would have bulldozed the grove. The tree-sitters surrendered their perch in 2008.
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201160_pf.html

• Spousal rape law
  1994

  Berkeley lecturer Nancy Lemon helps draft the law that makes raping one's spouse a felony in California, a crime legally equivalent to non-marital rape.

• Free Speech Movement
  1964

  Inspired by the Civil Rights movement, Cal students begin protesting rules limiting their political activities on campus, holding demonstrations for the right to use Sproul Plaza as the site of political discussions and actions. More than 800 students are arrested as the protest climaxes in a sit-in in December 1964. Following the arrests, university faculty vote to drop the restrictions. (Photo courtesy UC Berkeley)
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19024-2004Oct8?language=printer

• Flu vaccine
  1940 to 1950

  Cal biochemist Wendell M. Stanley and his colleagues develop the influenza virus vaccine.

• The cyclotron
  1931

  Ernest O. Lawrence, left, revolutionizes particle physics with the first cyclotron particle accelerator, a "proton merry-go-round" that whirls particles around at high speeds in order to blast open atomic nuclei. In 1939, Lawrence becomes UC Berkeley's first Nobel laureate. (Photo: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory)
  http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1939/lawrence-bio.html

• Fruit cocktail
  1930 to 1939

  William Cruess, a professor, food technologist, and chair of the "Division of Fruit Products" at Berkeley, invents the canned-fruit cocktail.

• A tradition of activism begins
  1930 to 1960

  In the 1930s, student organizations hold "peace strikes" to protest fascism and promote interracial relationships. In the McCarthy era, student protesters target a campus administrative ban on socialist or communist speakers, the use of capital punishment by the state, and a loyalty oath requiring UC employees to declare they are not Communists. (Photo: UC Berkeley)

• UC goes co-ed
  1870

  Women are permitted to start attending Cal one year after its founding.

• University of California founded
  1869

  Ten faculty members and about 40 students make up the flagship UC campus when it opens in Oakland. In 1873, the university — with nearly 200 students — relocates to Berkeley in 1873. (Photo: Steve McConnell / UC Berkeley)