For the spring semester of 2011 I am visiting Berkeley. I arrived in early January on a flight from Boston to San Francisco. Here is the plane at the airport in Boston:
There was no scheduled food service (unless you were in first class), so I brought along some sandwiches and peanuts.
The flight left Boston late because of a problem with the brakes. The plane crew in Boston learned that the brakes on one of the wheels of the plane were not working correctly, so the plane would need a longer runway than usual to land. Planes are designed to be able to land on a runway with a full tank of gas and a full passenger cabin in case of an emergency landing, but since the brakes were not all working it would be safer (in case of an emergency landing) if the plane weighed less than usual on takeoff. As the pilot explained to us, they could make the plane weigh less by removing three possible things: people, luggage, or fuel. Almost every seat on the plane was being used and the plane had already been filled with fuel for a cross-country flight. The crew decided it was easiest to use less fuel than to remove anyone or their luggage from the plane.
Of course less fuel on takeoff means we wouldn't have enough fuel to go across the country, so the pilot told all of us that the plane would have enough fuel to reach Omaha (Nebraska) and in Omaha we would be refueled again to let the plane reach San Francisco.
After half the fuel was removed from the plane in Boston, it needed to use the longest runway at the airport in order to reach the necessary speed for take off. Unfortunately, at that moment the longest runway at the airport was being repaired, so we had to wait for the repair crew to take their equipment off the runway before we could use it. That took about an hour. As the plane finally was speeding down the longest runway, I was thinking about the Concorde accident: maybe the repair crew had left a screwdriver on the runway? It turned out there was no problem and we made it to Omaha. Here is what Omaha looks like:
That is the best view I have of Omaha since we were not allowed to get off the plane. Once we had enough fuel we left for San Francisco.
I am staying in a cottage in north Berkeley which is located behind a house, so it's quite private. Here is what the cottage looks like from the outside (note the nice January weather):
On the inside there is a large room with a couch, desk, and bed
and in the second photo you can see the entrance into the kitchen. Here are wider views of the kitchen:
The small refrigerator magnet is from the Museum of Retro-Automobiles in Moscow, which I wrote about in a previous blog post.
In the kitchen I reached for a cup on the top shelf, and it was actually a container but I didn't see the top until it flew off as I took the container off the shelf quickly:
I tried to put the pieces back together, but not successfully:
My landlords had left on a trip for couple of weeks shortly before I arrived, so I wrote to tell them everything was okay except I already broke something.
During one of the first few days after I arrived, I wanted to make some eggs for breakfast but there was no whisk in the kitchen. There were a few others items I wanted to have in the kitchen but could not find in the cabinets, so I went shopping:
I bought: a whisk, a bowl, a large measuring cup, small measuring cups, smaller measuring cups, coasters, a cheese grater, bag clips, a can opener, an oven mitt, pot holders, scissors, a sponge with a handle and replacement sponges, a large garbage pail, and a small garbage pail. Can you find them all above? Soon after buying the scissors I found a pair of scissors in the cabinet, so the new ones were returned. Several of these items I found at Dollar Tree, which is a store in Berkeley where everything costs a dollar (tax included). For example, the coasters were just a dollar. They're pretty good coasters too: a wood bottom and a cork top. No complaints from me.
After buying the cheese grater I made a mistake and tried to use it on muenster cheese. Trying to put soft cheese through this grater was a disaster.
On my first morning in Berkeley I walked over to the math department, which is in ugly Evans Hall:
The most famous mathematician in America used to work at Berkeley, but his office was not located in Evans Hall, which was built two years after he left. The place where he worked is now a pit in front of the car in the photo above. Here is a closer view of the pit, looking from Evans:
The offices in Evans Hall have a bizarre numbering procedure. They are not in numerical order. Here is a sign on the 8th floor which illustrates the crazy way the offices are numbered:
The scene inside my office is sunny:
Directly outside the window, facing north, you can see Davis Hall, which is where the civil engineering department is located:
Since professors in the civil engineering department understand how earthquakes can affect man-made structures, presumably Davis Hall was carefully designed to survive a major earthquake. It would then be crushed by Evans Hall (there are two floors in Evans above my office), where the faculty study math, statistics, and economics.
Outside my office window to the east is the Hearst Memorial Mining Building (not named after newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, but rather his father George),
and to the west is McLaughlin Hall, where the College of Engineering has its offices:
Buildings around the Berkeley campus can be seen on an interactive map which tells you a little story about each building that you click on.
Looking straight down from my office window is a place you would not want to land if you jumped:
Evans Hall was repainted on the outside and the inside a few years ago. Since 1971 there was a painting of Galois on the 7th floor of the math department (click on it for a better view):
I found that photo here. Now the 7th floor looks more professional:
I heard that some math professors (certainly not those who use Galois theory!) hated the painting of Galois and wanted to get rid of it. Congratulations to them.
It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the math department from my cottage, and I am happy to do that instead of driving. Parking on the Berkeley campus is an expensive commodity, so much so that Berkeley rewards any professor who receives a Nobel prize with something more valuable than the Nobel prize: their own centrally located parking space. Several of these parking spaces are located near Evans Hall (the economics faculty in Evans has several Nobel winners among them) and the signs are marked "NL" for "Nobel Laureate". Click on the next photo for a better view of the sign.
Here you can see five NL parking spaces in a row:
Berkeley's math department has had several Fields medalists on the faculty: Steven Smale (retired), Bill Thurston (now at Cornell), Curt McMullen (now at Harvard), Vaughan Jones, and Richard Borcherds. In the late 1990s I saw a parking sign near the Nobel parking spaces above which said "Reserved for Fields Medalist". I don't see those signs now and I am not sure if they were put in a new place or removed.
Elsewhere on campus I saw what looks like reserved parking for Chicago Cubs fans:
There was no scheduled food service (unless you were in first class), so I brought along some sandwiches and peanuts.
The flight left Boston late because of a problem with the brakes. The plane crew in Boston learned that the brakes on one of the wheels of the plane were not working correctly, so the plane would need a longer runway than usual to land. Planes are designed to be able to land on a runway with a full tank of gas and a full passenger cabin in case of an emergency landing, but since the brakes were not all working it would be safer (in case of an emergency landing) if the plane weighed less than usual on takeoff. As the pilot explained to us, they could make the plane weigh less by removing three possible things: people, luggage, or fuel. Almost every seat on the plane was being used and the plane had already been filled with fuel for a cross-country flight. The crew decided it was easiest to use less fuel than to remove anyone or their luggage from the plane.
Of course less fuel on takeoff means we wouldn't have enough fuel to go across the country, so the pilot told all of us that the plane would have enough fuel to reach Omaha (Nebraska) and in Omaha we would be refueled again to let the plane reach San Francisco.
After half the fuel was removed from the plane in Boston, it needed to use the longest runway at the airport in order to reach the necessary speed for take off. Unfortunately, at that moment the longest runway at the airport was being repaired, so we had to wait for the repair crew to take their equipment off the runway before we could use it. That took about an hour. As the plane finally was speeding down the longest runway, I was thinking about the Concorde accident: maybe the repair crew had left a screwdriver on the runway? It turned out there was no problem and we made it to Omaha. Here is what Omaha looks like:
That is the best view I have of Omaha since we were not allowed to get off the plane. Once we had enough fuel we left for San Francisco.
On the inside there is a large room with a couch, desk, and bed
and in the second photo you can see the entrance into the kitchen. Here are wider views of the kitchen:
The small refrigerator magnet is from the Museum of Retro-Automobiles in Moscow, which I wrote about in a previous blog post.
In the kitchen I reached for a cup on the top shelf, and it was actually a container but I didn't see the top until it flew off as I took the container off the shelf quickly:
I tried to put the pieces back together, but not successfully:
My landlords had left on a trip for couple of weeks shortly before I arrived, so I wrote to tell them everything was okay except I already broke something.
During one of the first few days after I arrived, I wanted to make some eggs for breakfast but there was no whisk in the kitchen. There were a few others items I wanted to have in the kitchen but could not find in the cabinets, so I went shopping:
I bought: a whisk, a bowl, a large measuring cup, small measuring cups, smaller measuring cups, coasters, a cheese grater, bag clips, a can opener, an oven mitt, pot holders, scissors, a sponge with a handle and replacement sponges, a large garbage pail, and a small garbage pail. Can you find them all above? Soon after buying the scissors I found a pair of scissors in the cabinet, so the new ones were returned. Several of these items I found at Dollar Tree, which is a store in Berkeley where everything costs a dollar (tax included). For example, the coasters were just a dollar. They're pretty good coasters too: a wood bottom and a cork top. No complaints from me.
After buying the cheese grater I made a mistake and tried to use it on muenster cheese. Trying to put soft cheese through this grater was a disaster.
On my first morning in Berkeley I walked over to the math department, which is in ugly Evans Hall:
The most famous mathematician in America used to work at Berkeley, but his office was not located in Evans Hall, which was built two years after he left. The place where he worked is now a pit in front of the car in the photo above. Here is a closer view of the pit, looking from Evans:
The offices in Evans Hall have a bizarre numbering procedure. They are not in numerical order. Here is a sign on the 8th floor which illustrates the crazy way the offices are numbered:
The scene inside my office is sunny:
Directly outside the window, facing north, you can see Davis Hall, which is where the civil engineering department is located:
Since professors in the civil engineering department understand how earthquakes can affect man-made structures, presumably Davis Hall was carefully designed to survive a major earthquake. It would then be crushed by Evans Hall (there are two floors in Evans above my office), where the faculty study math, statistics, and economics.
Outside my office window to the east is the Hearst Memorial Mining Building (not named after newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, but rather his father George),
and to the west is McLaughlin Hall, where the College of Engineering has its offices:
Buildings around the Berkeley campus can be seen on an interactive map which tells you a little story about each building that you click on.
Looking straight down from my office window is a place you would not want to land if you jumped:
Evans Hall was repainted on the outside and the inside a few years ago. Since 1971 there was a painting of Galois on the 7th floor of the math department (click on it for a better view):
I found that photo here. Now the 7th floor looks more professional:
I heard that some math professors (certainly not those who use Galois theory!) hated the painting of Galois and wanted to get rid of it. Congratulations to them.
It takes me 30 minutes to walk to the math department from my cottage, and I am happy to do that instead of driving. Parking on the Berkeley campus is an expensive commodity, so much so that Berkeley rewards any professor who receives a Nobel prize with something more valuable than the Nobel prize: their own centrally located parking space. Several of these parking spaces are located near Evans Hall (the economics faculty in Evans has several Nobel winners among them) and the signs are marked "NL" for "Nobel Laureate". Click on the next photo for a better view of the sign.
Here you can see five NL parking spaces in a row:
Berkeley's math department has had several Fields medalists on the faculty: Steven Smale (retired), Bill Thurston (now at Cornell), Curt McMullen (now at Harvard), Vaughan Jones, and Richard Borcherds. In the late 1990s I saw a parking sign near the Nobel parking spaces above which said "Reserved for Fields Medalist". I don't see those signs now and I am not sure if they were put in a new place or removed.
Elsewhere on campus I saw what looks like reserved parking for Chicago Cubs fans:
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