Math & Physical Sciences

Taking a Look Inside Brains: Professor Na Ji

October 17, 2025

Twenty years ago, Professor Na Ji (PhD in Chemistry ‘05) went through what she calls the grad student version of a mid-life crisis. “I just got a bit bored. You publish a few papers, but then it’s like, ‘What’s next?’” So she started picking up biology textbooks – molecular, developmental, and finally neurobiology. “They talk about current, voltage–they speak the language of physicists. Very quantitative. I basically decided that I want to become a neurobiologist.” Her renowned Physics advisor,...

University of California sets world record with five Nobel Prizes in one week

October 16, 2025
Aidin Vaziri

The University of California made history this week, as its faculty and alumni won five Nobel Prizes across medicine, physics and chemistry — the most ever awarded to a single institution in one year.

On Monday, Frederick Ramsdell, a UC San Diego and UCLA alumnus, shared the...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/uc-nobel-prizes-record-21094964.p…

UC Berkeley's Mike Zaletel named 2025 American Physical Society Fellow

October 15, 2025

UC Berkeley associate professor of physics, Mike Zaletel, was elected as a 2025 American Physical Society Fellow for "pioneering contributions to the understanding of topological aspects of condensed matter, including those arising in moiré materials, and to computational methods for correlated systems."

Zaletel's research focuses on theoretical condensed matter physics and its intersection with quantum information and computational approaches. He aims to understand the behavior of...

Governor Newsom congratulates California Nobel laureates, underscoring the state’s global dominance in science and innovation

October 14, 2025

This announcement originally appeared on the official website for Governor Gavin Newsom on October 13, 2025.


SACRAMENTO – Five California scientists were honored among this year’s Nobel laureates, commemorating their groundbreaking contributions in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. Home to more Nobel laureates than any country in the world aside...

L&S astronomy alum Kareem El-Badry awarded 2025 MacArthur 'genius' fellowship

October 8, 2025
Lauren Miller

Astrophysicist Kareem El-Badry, an alumnus of the UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science (M.S. '18, Ph.D. '21, Astronomy), has been awarded a 2025 MacArthur Fellowship. The new MacArthur Fellows class, which was named on Wednesday, October 8, was rounded out by 21 other exceptional individuals, including UC Berkeley associate professor of optometry and vision science ...

John Clarke, UC Berkeley emeritus professor, awarded 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics

October 7, 2025
Robert Sanders

Man wearing glasses wearing red sweater and collared shirt

John Clarke, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum tunneling, one of many strange aspects of quantum mechanics.

Clarke shared the prize with two other physicists, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis, who at the time of their prize-winning research were at UC...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/07/john-clarke-uc-berkeley-emeritus-professor-…

Gov. Newsom visits UC Berkeley to sign bill encouraging quantum innovation

October 4, 2025
Robert Sanders

two men talking in a lab surrounded by young people

Visiting UC Berkeley’s Campbell Hall today, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to create “quantum innovation zones” across the state, positioning the campus as a leader in the race to establish California and the Bay Area as a center of an emerging economy.

The innovation zones will leverage California’s leading edge in quantum computing and research,...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/03/gov-newsom-visits-uc-berkeley-to-sign-bill-…

Nobelist George Smoot, whose satellite experiments validated the Big Bang theory, dies at 80

September 30, 2025
Robert Sanders

Smoot, a physicist at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for detecting minute temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background, a prediction of the Big Bang theory.

a man in a brown leather jacket, blue shirt and glasses, with the Andromeda Galaxy in the background.

Physicist George Smoot told a packed press conference in 1992, “If you’re religious, it’s...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/29/nobelist-george-smoot-whose-satellite-exper…

UC Berkeley ranked No. 1 public school in the U.S. by the Wall Street Journal

September 30, 2025

Sather Gate with students in foreground

In new rankings released today (Monday, Sept. 29) by the Wall Street Journal and College Pulse, UC Berkeley was named the No. 1 public college in the country — the second year in a row it received the distinction.

Monday’s ranking comes one...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/09/29/uc-berkeley-ranked-no-1-public-school-in-th…

If You Want to Go Far, Go Together: Professor Ben Safdi

December 23, 2024
Avi Rosenzweig

Studying the physics of atomic particles takes a lot of room. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the biggest particle accelerator, is in a ring tunnel 27km (17 miles) long buried about two football fields deep underground. It serves as the factory, or artisanal manufacturer, of bespoke subatomic particles like quarks. But where is the design studio for these rare particle models? That would be the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics (LITP)...