Volume 1, Issue 3
Dean's Message
Mark Richards
Dean, Physical Sciences
August 2004
As the Fall Semester begins and thousands of new students arrive on the Berkeley campus, we in the Physical Sciences kick off the academic year looking forward as well as reflecting on the past.
As you likely know, UC President Dynes has selected a new Berkeley Chancellor. Dr. Robert J. Birgeneau, currently President of the University of Toronto, will soon take over from Chancellor Robert Berdahl, Berkeley's leader since 1997. Birgeneau is scheduled to begin his new duties in October, bringing with him a special appreciation for the physical sciences. Birgeneau is an experimental physicist renowned for his research on high-temperature superconductors. He earned his bachelor's degree in science from the University of Toronto in 1963 and a PhD in physics from Yale University in 1966. He served on the physics faculty at MIT, where he became Dean of Science before relocating to Canada in 2000 to assume the Presidency of the University of Toronto.
During Birgeneau's tenure, Toronto reached a historic fundraising goal of $1 billion, a record for any Canadian university in a single capital campaign. Along with excelling as an administrator, Birgeneau also managed to maintain an active research laboratory. We will surely miss Bob Berdahl, who has been a guiding light on the campus as well as a strong supporter of building new laboratories for Berkeley's physical scientists. But we now look ahead to a bright future under the leadership of Bob Birgeneau.
The start of the new academic year also brings with it the passing of one of Berkeley's most honored alumni, Philip H. Abelson (PhD '39, Physics). Dr. Abelson was a graduate student at Berkeley during the heyday of nuclear physics and was the co-discoverer of the element neptunium. He worked with Edwin M. McMillan, who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1951 with Glenn T. Seaborg for their contributions in describing neptunium, plutonium and other transuranic elements. Dr. Abelson is perhaps best known for his extraordinary two-decade tenure as the editor of Science magazine beginning in 1962. At Science, Abelson electrified the editorial page with his insightful and sometimes controversial commentary on subjects ranging from medicine to national energy policy.
Abelson made fundamental contributions in many fields of research, including physics, chemistry, geology, biology and medicine, during a time when "interdisciplinary" was not yet the buzz word it has become. When he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959 he could have chosen any of seven disciplines as his primary allegiance. Interestingly, he chose geology. He was also the President of the Carnegie Institution from 1971 to1978, and received the National Medal of Science in 1987. I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Abelson several times over the past few years. I know that he will be fondly remembered, not only for his research contributions, but also for his unshakable optimism, boundless curiosity, and remarkable vision across all the sciences.
I hope you enjoy this month's issue of ScienceMatters@Berkeley and that it spurs you to reflect upon all that UC Berkeley and its alumni have contributed to our knowledge of the world, while also looking ahead with us to the great things yet to come from this exceptional institution.
Mark Richards
Dean of Physical Sciences
Professor of Earth and Planetary Science