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.
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...
There’s a scene in Pixar’s hit film Inside Out 2 when teen Riley, the human protagonist of the Inside Out world, senses that one of her 13-year-old friends isn’t telling her everything. The audience zooms in to Riley’s mind, where her emotions are trying to figure it all out. Disgust is on top of it. She pulls up a screen and starts examining Riley’s friend’s furrowed brow. “Enhance,” Disgust barks, as the view pushes into the telltale corrugator muscle that controls our eyebrows.
On Wednesday, October 9, the College of Letters & Science Administrative Advisory Committee (AAC) hosted its inaugural L&S Brown Bag Lunch and Learn. One of several new initiatives by the recently revamped AAC, the Lunch and Learn provides L&S staff members an opportunity to connect with their colleagues and...
During the 2020 vice presidential debate, then-Sen. Kamala Harris took the floor back from an interrupting Vice President Mike Pence with two words that soon became a slogan: “I’m speaking.”
When Harris speaks, there’s one person who is listening very intently: Nicole Holliday, acting associate professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley.
“Linguistics is the scientific study of language,” explains Holliday in this...
What role do the humanities play in a world challenged by climate change, rising authoritarianism, censorship, racism, wars and collapsed economies?
The humanities and their forms of historical, visual and cultural literacy are critical to understanding and addressing the human experience and the planet’s survival, says Sara Guyer, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities in UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science.
From a hard-scrabble pioneer apple farm in Boulder Creek, California, nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Carla and Renata Hesse’s great-aunts planted the seeds for their family’s extensive ties to UC Berkeley. Spanning four generations and more than 100 years, 10 members of the Hesse family have earned degrees from Berkeley, including eight in the College of Letters & Science.
Today, Carla is the Peder Sather Professor in the History Department after serving as executive dean of the College of Letters & Science from 2014 to 2019 and...
