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University of California

U.S. public university with campuses at Berkeley (main campus), Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego (La Jolla), San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz. Established in 1868 in Oakland, it has become one of the largest university systems in the U.S. The Berkeley campus, which replaced the Oakland campus in 1873, remains a leader in scientific fields as well as in many other academic areas. In the 1930s researchers there produced the first cyclotron, isolated the human polio virus, and discovered several new chemical elements. The San Francisco campus, originally a medical college, joined the University of California in 1873 and remains a centre for medical research and education. The San Diego campus, founded as a marine station, became part of the university in 1912; it includes the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The Los Angeles branch (UCLA), founded in 1919, includes schools of law, medicine, and engineering. The Santa Barbara campus, originally founded as a teachers college, joined the university system in 1944. The Davis and Riverside campuses grew out of agricultural institutes and were added in 1959. To answer a growing need for broad-based education and research, the university opened campuses at Santa Cruz and Irvine in 1965 and added the Merced campus in 2005. The University of California operates nuclear research centres at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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