150th Chemistry

Berkeley Chemistry: 1868 to the Present

Chemistry has been part of Berkeley since the University's charter was signed on March 23,1868. The chemist Robert Fisher was one of the first ten faculty to be hired.

Happy 100th Birthday Gilman Hall

sketch of building

image: 1909 conceptual sketch of Gilman Hall by John Galen Howard, campus supervising architect, 1901-1922

Berkeley 150 logoAs we celebrate the campus sesquicentennial, Gilman Hall will officially turn 100 on March 22...

Henry Chalmers Biddle

March 3, 2020
Henry C. Biddle was appointed to the chemistry department at Berkeley in 1901. He did research in biochemistry and taught organic chemistry.

Alum Kaoru "Kay" Inouye's internment and military story

July 13, 2021
Kaoru Inouye | discovernikki.org

Kaoru Inouye teaches chemistry at Heart Mountain, World War II

Scene in the Chemistry class at the Heart Mountain High School, as Kaoru Inouye, instructor, is showing student Sumi Tam[...] a step in one of the Chemistry experiments. Photographer: Iwasaki, Hikaru; Heart Mountain, Wyoming. War Relocation Authority...

In Memoriam: Harold S. Johnston

July 19, 2021
By Ronald C. Cohen

Two scientists in a lab

Harold Johnston circa 1970s. (Photo: Dennis Galloway collection, Bancroft Library)

Pioneering atmospheric chemist and UC Berkeley Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Harold S. Johnston, was born in Woodstock, Georgia, on October 11, 1920, and died on Oct 20, 2012. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, with a minor in English literature, from Emory University...

Peter Armentrout

March 26, 2020

Peter Armentrout

Professor Armentrout (at the College of Chemistry from 1981 to 1986 before moving to University of Utah) was born in Dayton, Ohio on March 13, 1953. He received a B.S. degree with highest honors in 1975 from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. While at Case, Prof. Armentrout conducted research with Prof. Rob Dunbar on photodissociation...

Walter Charles Blasdale

March 25, 2020

Group of people posing in front of a building

Chemistry faculty and staff stand in front of Gilman Hall, 1917. Walter Blasdale is in the front row, second from right.

By W. F. Giauque, J. H. Hildebrand, V. F. Lenzen

...

William Crowell Bray

March 30, 2020
William Crowell Bray

By G. E. K. Branch, A. R. Davis, and J. H. Hildebrand

William Crowell Bray, Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, died February 24, 1946, after he had apparently been recuperating from an illness of several months.

A...

Leo Brewer

March 4, 2020
By Rollie J. Myers, Gerd M. Rosenblatt, and Herbert L. Strauss

Professor Brewer standing next to chalkboard

Leo Brewer died on February 22, 2005 after several years of declining health. He was a chemist’s chemist always ready to help out fellow chemists, physicists, and materials scientists with his vast chemical knowledge. He is considered to be the founder of modern high-temperature chemistry.

Brewer was born June 13, 1919 in St...

Ignacio Tinoco Jr.

March 25, 2020

Ignacio Jr. Tinoco

By Kerry Grens

Ignacio (Nacho) Tinoco, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, who pioneered methods to understand the structures of RNA, died last month (November 15). He was 85....