One of the greatest and lesser known joys of a (sometimes joyless) Berkeley education was the access to so many truly great lecturers in the buildings that dotted the campus.
There were many professors with rockstar-style reputations among Berkeley undergrads for lectures that electrified audiences: Pedro Noguera in education, Barbara Christian in African-American studies, Filippenko in astronomy, Abel in English, the brave Tyrone Hayes in integrative bio, and so on.
Another such name was bio professor Marian Diamond, who died last month at age 90. She was the prof known for an infectious fascination with the human brain, which she described as the most complex and wonderful thing in the known universe.
Diamond was born in Glendale and transferred from Glendale Community College to UC Berkeley in 1946. In '48, she became the first woman to graduate from the then-department of anatomy. She wound up teaching at Berkeley and in the 1980s gained international attention for finding that brains keep developing into old age — research fueled in part by her work studying slices of Einstein's brain.
Watch this documentary about Diamond and her work.
Of course at some point she was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, the most hallowed distinction given on campus in terms of real worth for students. Whoever had that symbol by their name in the course catalog meant the teacher was just goddamn good.
Diamond was known for showing up to special events and producing a real brain specimen from a fancy hat box, and declaring, in her signature slogan, that the brain was the most magnificent structure — a creator of ideas — that we know in the universe.
Great lady, Marian Diamond. May she rest in peace.
My all-time favorite lecturer will be the perpetually frowning and soaring orator Leon Litwack in history. Litwack's coal-miner bass of a voice and Eastwood-like delivery would kinda enrapture those inside massive Wheeler Hall during History 7B, his introductory course on U.S. history since the Civil War.
I took it. I refused to miss a lecture.
Litwack employed music, video, and still photographs as he spoke, often moving students to tears over the racial horrors of every major American period to our day. His lecture on the role of Berkeley itself in the opening of the 1960s was especially memorable. Litwack was deeply committed to the notion of the centrality of African American history to the narrative of America at large.
Watch him above, in just one instance. Especially good when he cites a few modern hip-hop lyrics.
A Golden Bear through and through, Litwack was born in Santa Barbara and got his B.A. and doctorate at Cal. He is now emeritus, at 87. I hope he knows in retirement that he affected generations of students' lives, including mine.