The outstanding faculty in the Division of Mathematical & Physical Sciences are pushing the boundaries in the fields of astronomy, earth & planetary science, mathematics, and physics. Read below to learn more about their groundbreaking work.
The sketch of modern physics’ conundrum that we in the general public have a hazy picture of hasn’t changed for a hundred years. The cat is both kicking and has kicked, the electron is zipping around but we can’t know both where it is and how quick it is going, the particles are mysteriously linked in ways that appear faster than the speed of light, God does play dice, and so on. If Einstein couldn’t figure it out, what hope do we have?
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 Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics (...
My Brilliant Friend, by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, is the New York Times’ No. 1 book of the century. This recognition, and the recent adaptation of Ferrante’s four-novel Neopolitan Quartet into an HBO series, underscores this writer’s profound influence.
Ferrante’s popular novels, translated into English by Ann Goldstein, are an intimate exploration...
The Department of Rhetoric selected Marianne Constable as the inaugural recipient of the Distinguished Rhetoric Faculty Fellowship. Constable is a UC Berkeley professor, a leading authority in law and language, and a co-founder of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities.
“Marianne Constable has amassed a glittering record in scholarship, teaching, and service over the course of her 34-year...
Mathematician Ken Ribet is well known for a 1990 paper that paved the way, five years later, for a historic proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, one of the most famous unsolved mathematical problems of modern times.
But an oft-cited paper he wrote earlier in his career, in 1976, is dearer to his heart and has now earned him a coveted...
Since mountains move at a geological pace, are geologists ever in much of a rush? Maybe that depends on the scientist. Out of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, modern volcanology was born. Governments provided funding to develop forecasts for eruptions. Igneous petrology, the specialization focused on rock...
Particle physics research is spinning its wheels, trying to gain traction on a very basic problem. Thirteen billion years ago, the Big Bang produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Theory holds that every particle has an antimatter companion that is virtually identical to itself, but with the opposite charge. But there are a lot more ‘ordinary’ particles than antiparticles – you reading this right now is clear evidence – so where is all the missing antimatter?
Theoretical physicists float a bunch of possible explanations for this...
Lucille Lorenz, Arts & Humanities writer-in-residence
Niklaus Largier is Chair in the department of Comparative Literature, is a professor in the departments of German and Comparative Literature, and is affiliated with the Programs in Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.
His scholarship covers an extensive range of interests, including the intersections of literature, philosophy, theology, and other fields of knowledge within medieval and early modern German literature. Professor Largier’s work delves into topics such as ascetic practices, eroticism, and the literary imagination, as well...
The burial rites at the heart of Sophocles’s famous tragedy Antigonecan seem arcane to many contemporary Western audiences. But a new adaptation at Los Angeles’s Native Voices, Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni, reimagines the play as a complicated, humanizing tragedy about a Nez Perce family living in our nation’s capital, and caught between the pressures of the outside world and a nationalist party that threatens to silence their history. Merging Nez Perce storytelling with the struggle over ancestors...
Mathematician Ken Ribet is well known for a 1990 paper that paved the way, five years later, for a historic proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem, one of the most famous unsolved mathematical problems of modern times.
