University of California Berkeley

The University of California Berkeley also referred to as Berkeley University of California Berkeley California or simply Cal is a public research university located in Berkeley California. It is the flagship campus of the University of California system, one of three parts in the state's public higher education plan, which also includes the California State University system and the California Community Colleges System.

The University of California Berkeley is the most selective and highest ranked in United States. News and Academic Ranking of World Universities public university in the world for undergraduate education. It is considered by Times Higher Education as a member of the elite group of six universities that lead in world reputation rankings in 2015 and is ranked third on the United States. News' 2015 Best Global Universities rankings conducted in the United States. And nearly 50 other countries. The Academic Ranking of World Universities also ranks the University of California Berkeley as the fourth in the world's 500 top universities, third in engineering, fourth in social sciences and first in mathematics & life sciences. Aside from its academic prestige, the university is also well known for producing a high number of entrepreneurs.

Established in 1868 as the result of the merger of the private College of California and the public Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland, UC Berkeley is the oldest institution in the University of California system and offers approximately 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. The UC has been charged with providing both classical and practical education for the state's people. Cal co manages three United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the United States. Department of Energy.

Berkeley faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 72 Nobel Prizes including 30 alumni Nobel laureates 9 Wolf Prizes, 7 Fields Medals, 18 Turing Awards, 45 MacArthur Fellowships, 20 Academy Awards, and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. To date, University of California Berkeley scientists have discovered 6 chemical elements of the periodic table californium, seaborgium berkelium, einsteinium, fermium, lawrencium. Along with Berkeley Lab, The University of California Berkeley researchers have discovered 16 chemical elements in total more than any other university in the world.  Berkeley is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and continues to have very high research activity with $730.7 million in research and development expenditures in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014. Berkeley physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic bomb in the world, which he personally headquartered at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War Faculty member Edward Teller was together with Stanislaw Ulam the father of the hydrogen bomb. Former United States Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate Steven Chu Ph.D 1976, was Director of Berkeley Lab, 2004.2009.

 Campus

 The University of California Berkeley campus encompasses approximately 1,232 acres 499 ha, though the central campus occupies only the low lying western 178 acres 72 ha of this area. Of the remaining acres, approximately 200 acres 81 ha are occupied by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory other facilities above the main campus include the Lawrence Hall of Science and several research units, notably the Space Sciences Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, an undeveloped 800 acre 320 ha ecological preserve, the UC Botanical Garden and a recreation center in Strawberry Canyon. Portions of the mostly undeveloped, eastern area of the campus are actually within the City of Oakland  these portions extend from the Claremont Resort north through the Panoramic Hill neighborhood to Tilden Park.

To the west of the central campus is the downtown business district of Berkeley to the northwest is the neighborhood of North Berkeley, including the so called Gourmet Ghetto, a commercial district known for high quality dining due to the presence of such world renowned restaurants as Chez Pansies. Immediately to the north is a quiet residential neighborhood known as Northside with a large graduate student population situated north of that are the upscale residential neighborhoods of the Berkeley Hills. Immediately southeast of campus lies fraternity row, and beyond that the Clark Kerr Campus and an upscale residential area named Claremont. The area south of the university includes student housing and Telegraph Avenue, one of Berkeley's main shopping districts with stores, street vendors and restaurants catering to college students and tourists. In addition, the University also owns land to the northwest of the main campus, a 90-acre 36 ha married student housing complex in the nearby town of Albany Albany Village and the Gill Tract, and a field research station several miles to the north in Richmond, California.