150 Years of Women at Berkeley
As Women's History Month comes to a close, we are dedicating this week's edition of Science at Cal @Home to all of the brilliant woman in STEM who have made incredible contributions to our campus.
150 Years of Women at Berkeley
October 3, 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of the UC Regents’ unanimous approval of a resolution by Regent Samuel F. Butterworth: “That young ladies be admitted into the University on equal terms in all respects with young men.” The first women were admitted to the university in 1872, and the first woman, Rosa Scrivner, graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture in 1874. Since that time, hundreds of thousands of women have graduated from UC Berkeley, and thousands of staff, faculty, and friends of the campus have made immeasurable contributions to our campus and beyond.

Explore with us some of the remarkable scientific women of UC Berkeley, who have contributed so much to our knowledge of the world around us.


Biographies

Agnes Fay Morgan   (May 4, 1884 – July 20, 1968) was an American chemist and academic. She was the longtime chair of the home economics program at the University of California. Her program was strongly grounded in science, and students admitted into the program were required to have a level of science education that was not typical of home economics programs at the time. Morgan was one of the earliest married female college professors in the United States.


Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; May 31, 1912 – February 16, 1997) was a Chinese-American nuclear physicist who has been dubbed "the First Lady of Physics," "Queen of Nuclear Research," and "the Chinese Madame Curie." Her research contributions include work on the Manhattan Project and the Wu experiment, "which contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity."

In 1936, she visited the University of California at Berkeley, where she met Professor Ernest Lawrence, who was responsible for the first cyclotron and who later won a Nobel Prize, and another Chinese physics student, Luke Chia Yuan, who influenced her both to remain at Berkeley and obtain her Ph.D.  
My Love Affair with the Brain
Prof . Marian Diamond
Marian Diamond   (November 11, 1926 – July 25, 2017), was a Professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, and was one of the founders of modern neuroscience. Her research demonstrated the impact of enrichment—a simple but powerful new understanding that has literally changed the world, from how we think about ourselves to how we raise our children.
Dr. Diamond showed anatomically, for the first time, what we now call plasticity, and in so doing shattered the old paradigm of understanding the brain as static and unchangeable.

My Love Affair with the Brain  is an award-winning PBS documentary that brings the viewer right into the heart of science and into a deeper understanding of your own brain. 

Integrative Biology 131 - Human Anatomy
Prof. Marian Diamond
Join Prof. Diamond for a full semester of human anatomy lectures. We promise we won't make you take an exams!

Inspiration
One Woman’s Journey in Physics
Prof. Mary K Gaillard
In 1981, Mary K Gaillard became the first woman on the physics faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. Her career as a theoretical physicist spanned the period from the inception — in the late 1960s and early 1970s — of what is now known as the Standard Model of particle physics and its experimental confirmation, culminating with the discovery of the Higgs particle in 2012. Her book A Singularly Unfeminine Profession recounts Gaillard's experiences as a woman in a very male-dominated field, while tracing the development of the Standard Model as she witnessed it and participated in it.
Resilience
Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy
Ruzena Bajcsy is the NEC Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the founding director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) in 2001. As part of her activities in CITRIS, and together with the University of California Center for the Humanities, she played a founding role in establishing a program of Digital Humanities.

Before joining UC Berkeley, she headed the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation (1999–2001).
Not Going It Alone
Prof. Judith Klinman
Judith P. Klinman  (born April 17, 1941) is a chemist, biochemist, and molecular biologist known for her work on enzyme catalysis. She became the first female science professor at UC Berkeley in 1978. In 2012, she was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama.
The Bearded Lady Project
The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science  is a short documentary film and photography series that demonstrates the competencies and passions of female paleontologists and how this unfair, gendered stereotype can be easily diminished with the donning of a beard. How, with some well-placed facial hair, any female scientist can be perceived as equally rugged, tough and determined.

Lisa White and Kirk Johnson
Also! Don't miss Dr. Lisa White from the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology who is featured in the PBS NOVA series Making North America .
STEM Today
A Miraculous Proof (Ptolemy's Theorem)
Prof. Zvezdelina Stankova
Zvezdelina Entcheva Stankova is a professor of mathematics at Mills College and a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the founder of the Berkeley Math Circle , and an expert in the combinatorial enumeration of permutations with forbidden patterns.
Why I Make
Emily Pilloton
Emily Pilloton is a Lecturer in the College of Environmental Design, and is a designer, builder, educator, and founder of the nonprofit Project H Design and Girls Garage , a rigorous STEM program for girls. She works alongside youth ages 9-18 to co-design and build full-scale public architecture projects with a civic purpose.
BEST Tensegrity Lab Tour
Prof. Alice Agogino
Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. She directs the   BEST Lab :   Berkeley Energy and Sustainable Technologies | Berkeley Expert Systems Technology | Berkeley Emergent Space Tensegrities. She currently serves as Chair of the  Development Engineering Graduate Group   and Education Director of the  Blum Center for Emerging Economies .
Fire & Water: Restoring natural fire to California's mountains
Katya Rakhmatulina
Katya Rakhmatulina, UC Berkeley environmental engineering Ph.D. student, studies fire and water in Yosemite National Park's Illilouette Basin. Research shows that restoring natural fire regimes to California's mountains could be a win-win: more water, improved biodiversity, and a reduced risk of catastrophic fires.
Human-Robot Interaction
Prof. Anca Dragan
Anca Dragan is an Assistant Professor in the EECS Department at UC Berkeley. Her goal is to enable robots to work with, around, and in support of people. She runs the  InterACT Lab , where they focus on algorithms for human-robot interaction -- algorithms that move beyond the robot's function in isolation, and generate robot behavior that also accounts for interaction and coordination with end-users.
Anca Dragan Speaks at WIRED25
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