University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley, it is the state's first land-grant university and was the founding campus of the University of California system. Berkeley was also a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was one of the original eight "Public Ivy" schools with a quality of education comparable to the Ivy League. It is often regarded as one of the most prestigious and elite universities in the world.

The university is organized around fifteen schools of study on the same campus, including the College of Chemistry and the College of Engineering. It also houses the Haas School of Business, the first American business school at a public university. With a strict academic standard for athlete admission, Berkeley students compete in thirty varsity athletic sports, and the university is one of twelve full-member institutions in the Pac-12 Conference. Berkeley's athletic teams (the California Golden Bears) have also won 107 national championships, 196 individual national titles, and 223 Olympic medals (including 121 gold).

Berkeley is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It also has three national laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory). Best known for their central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb and discovering sixteen chemical elements, they are some of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions. In 2021, the federal funding for campus research and development exceeded $1 billion. Thirty-two libraries also compose the Berkeley library system which is the sixth largest research library by number of volumes held in the United States.

Berkeley's endowment is valued at $6.9 billion, making it one of the wealthiest academic institutions in the United States. Due to its proximity to Silicon Valley, Berkeley promotes high-tech entrepreneurship and has produced the most undergraduate startup company founders amongst all American public universities, raising $14 billion in venture capital. Founded in 2012, Berkeley also has its own startup accelerator (Berkeley SkyDeck) which has become a major university incubator both within the United States and worldwide. Among its alumni are the co-founders and CEOs of the largest companies in the world; such as Electronic Arts, Google, Adobe Systems, Softbank (Masayoshi Son) and Qualcomm.

Berkeley's alumni, faculty, and researchers also includes 260 American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows, 190 recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship, 144 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 139 Guggenheim Fellows, 125 Sloan Fellows, 110 Nobel laureates, 75 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 68 recipients of the National Medal of Science, 34 Pulitzer Prize winners, 30 Wolf Prize winners, 25 living billionaire alumni, 22 cabinet members, 19 Academy Award winners, 14 Fields Medalists, 10 state governors, 7 heads of state or government, and 6 chief justices. It is also a producer of Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, and Fulbright Scholars. Provided by Wikipedia