Double–Cal alumnus Barry Barish is one of three men who won the Nobel Prize in Physics!
Barish earned his B.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics from UC Berkeley, which means brings us our 92nd Nobel laureate with Cal ties, the fourth-most for any university. Unfortunately, Barish will not be able to enjoy those sweet Nobel laureate parking spots as those are reserved for a more exclusive club—our seven current faculty Nobel laureates.
Barish earned this honor for his collaboration with Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss; their work culminated in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), which was the first to detect Albert Einstein’s concept of gravitational waves—ripples in the very fabric of space.