University of California Berkeley

Founded 1868. Flagship of the UC system, home of the Free Speech Movement and 20-plus Nobel winners.

Overview

Berkeley opened as California's first land-grant university and grew into the strongest public research campus in the world by common ranking consensus. Its faculty discovered 16 chemical elements, from Californium to Lawrencium, and Oppenheimer taught physics here before Los Alamos. The 1964 Free Speech Movement made the campus a permanent symbol of student politics. Today Berkeley enrolls some 45,000 students and runs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory up the hill. Its electrical engineering and computer science program anchors Bay Area talent pipelines.