Guide to the 150 Years of Women at UC Berkeley Mural

Background image: Celebrating 150 Years of Women at UC Berkeley

Background

The 150W Mural in the Undergraduate Academic Building is part of a celebration of “150 Years of Women at UC Berkeley” – 150W for short. Created by Twin Walls Mural Company, the 150W mural was made possible by many donors who contributed funds between 2020-2022. The mural highlights 41 distinguished women and includes alumnae, faculty, friends of the university, and staff.

Explore the Mural

Using the numbers on the mural below, learn more about each of the amazing women featured in this celebration.

1. June Jordan

June Jordan was an influential poet whose work addressed race, gender, sexuality, imperialism, and social justice.

2. Helen Wills [Moody] Roark

Helen Wills Roark is widely regarded as the dominant women’s tennis player of the 20th century.

3. Susan Stryker

After earning her Ph.D. in United States history from UC Berkeley in 1992, Susan Stryker helped create the field of transgender studies through her writing, documentaries, and activism.

4. Elaine Kim

Elaine Kim is the first Asian woman to earn tenure at UC Berkeley and helped found the Ethnic Studies Department and the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies program.

5. Charmin Smith

Charmin Smith is the first Black head coach of Cal Women’s Basketball. She has been named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Figures in Women’s College Basketball in 2020, 2024, and 2025.

6. Ynés Mexía

Mexía was a botanist and often regarded as the greatest collector of novel plant species of her era, discovering more than 500 new species of plants, 50 of which are named after her.

7. Ida Louise Jackson

Jackson became the first African-American certified by the state to teach in a California public high school and later became the first Black teacher to teach in the Oakland Unified School District.

8. Carol Tecla Christ

Christ served as the 11th and first female Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley and was awarded the Academic Senate’s Clark Kerr Award in 2024.

9. Julia Morgan

Morgan was the first woman to become a licensed architect in California and the main designer of the Hearst Greek Theater, Hearst Gymnasium, and Hearst Castle.

10. Jennifer Doudna

Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the development of CRISPR-Cas9 as a tool for genome editing. She is the first female professor at UC Berkeley to receive a Nobel prize.

11. Judith Butler

Judith Butler is a highly influential American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has shaped contemporary feminist, queer, and critical theory. They are best known for developing the concept of gender performativity.

12. Jessica Peixotto

Jessica Blanche Peixotto was the second woman to earn a Ph.D from the University of California and became the first woman to be promoted to full professor at Berkeley in 1918, later serving as department head.

13. Miné Okubo

Miné Okubo documented the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. She is best known for her illustrated memoir Citizen 13660 (1946), one of the earliest and most influential visual accounts of incarceration in U.S. history.

14. Chien-Shiung Wu

Known as the “First Lady of Physics,” Wu was a recipient of over 15 major awards. In 1952 she became the first woman to hold a tenured faculty position at Columbia University, the first woman to receive a D. Sc. degree from Princeton University in 1958, and the first woman to lead the American Physical Society as its president in 1975.

15. Mary Blackburn

Mary L. Blackburn is a pioneering public health nutritionist and community leader whose research and service helped shape nutrition education and food security programs in California and beyond.

16. Maxine Hong Kingston

Kingston’s works of literature have earned her the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the American Book Award for Nonfiction, the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton in 1997 and the National Medal of Arts from President Obama in 2013.

17. Patricia Holden

Holden is a Professor of Environmental Microbiology at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara, where she has taught and conducted research since 1997.

18. Barbara Lee

Barbara Lee was the first Black woman from Northern California elected to the State Senate, and the first woman elected to represent California’s 13th (formerly 9th) congressional district. She serves as the Mayor of Oakland (elected April 2025).

19. Margarita Melville

Margarita Melville was a professor and associate dean of the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley where she expanded ethnic and women’s studies in universities by centering the lived experiences of Mexican American women within academic discourse.

20. Maud Worcester Makemson

Makemson received her Ph.D. in Astronomy from UC Berkeley in 1930. In 1936, Makemson became the fourth woman to direct the Vassar Observatory and served as a consultant to NASA on lunar exploration in 1964-65.

21. Barbara Christian

Dr. Christian was a UC Berkeley professor who helped to establish the African-American Studies department in 1972. In 2000, she was awarded UC Berkeley’s highest honor, the Berkeley Citation.

22. Laura Fish Somersal

Somersal's linguistic work contributed to a Wappo dictionary, text collection, grammatical sketch, and several specialized linguistic studies.

23. Annie Coker

Annie Coker was the first Black woman to graduate from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1929. After admission to the State Bar, she became the first African American woman attorney in California.

24. Norma Alarcón

Norma Alarcón is the founder of Third World Press and a noted Chicana theorist and scholar whose essays have shaped Chicana Studies and paved the way for contemporary theories of Chicana subjectivity.

25. Catherine Ceniza Choy

Catherine Ceniza Choy is Professor of Ethnic Studies and an Associate Dean of the College of Letters & Science’s Division of Undergraduate Studies. She is UC Berkeley's first tenured Filipino American studies professor.

26. Phyllis Lyon

Phyllis Lyon was a gay rights activist for over 50 years. She helped to ensure that the fundamental right to marry under the California Constitution belongs to all couples.

27. Del Martin

Del Martin was a pioneering American lesbian, feminist, and gay rights activist who co-founded the nation’s first lesbian organization.

28. Maria Ascención Solórsano

Maria Ascención Solórsano, as the last known speaker of the Mutsun language, played a crucial role in preserving the language and culture at a moment when both were at risk of being lost.

29. Millicent Washburn Shinn

Millicent Washburn Shinn was a pioneering scholar in education and early childhood psychology, and was the first woman to earn a doctorate from UC Berkeley in 1898.

30. Vivian Rodgers

Vivian Rogers was the first African American woman to graduate from UC Berkeley, paving the way for many future African American women to attend UC Berkeley.

31. Beverly Cleary

Beverly Bunn Cleary was an immensely successful author, writing children's and young adult fiction. Her books have been published in over 29 different languages, and has sold more than 90 million copies.

32. Phoebe Hearst

Hearst was a major benefactress to the university and its first woman regent of UC Berkeley in 1897.

33. Isha Ray

Isha Ray is a professor at UC Berkeley's Energy & Resources Group, whose research on water resources and community-driven development has shaped international policy.

34. Carmen Foghorn

Carmen Foghorn was Director of the American Indian Graduate Program (AIGP). For over 40 years (1971-2017), she played a critical role in mentoring Native students at Berkeley.

35. Evelyn Nakano Glenn

Evelyn Nakano Glenn founded the Center for Race and Gender (CRG) at UC Berkeley and has written several influential books. She has also served as President of the American Sociological Association (2009–2010) and has won 14 awards.

36. Jackie Goldberg

Jackie Goldberg is a distinguished educator, activist, and public servant known for her decades‑long leadership in public education, civil rights, and local government.

37. LaNada War Jack

LaNada War Jack is a pioneering Native American activist and author whose leadership helped transform U.S. higher education and Indigenous rights movements. She was one of the first Native American students at Berkeley where she founded the Native American Student Organization, and played a key role in the Third World Liberation Front strike.

38. Louise Alone Thompson (Patterson)

Louise Alone Thompson (Patterson) is a notable African American UC Berkeley alumna who engaged in a lifelong battle for social justice and participated in struggles for human rights.

39. Vivian Osborne Marsh

Vivian Osborne Marsh was a pioneering scholar, activist, and civic leader whose work advanced education, civil rights, and community empowerment. At Berkeley she founded the Kappa chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., the first chapter on the West Coast dedicated to scholarship and service.

40. Anna Head

Anna Head was a pioneering educator and one of UC Berkeley’s first women graduates, earning her bachelor’s degree in Education Administration in 1879 at a time when women were a significant minority of the student body. She founded Miss Head’s School for Girls in Berkeley in 1887, which became a model of progressive education.

41. Alice Waters

Alice Waters is an influential chef, restaurateur, author, and food activist whose work reshaped American food culture and education. She is the founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley and the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley.

42. Group of Graduates

This image is a recognition in the mural for all of Cal’s many other women contributors both in the past, present, and in the future.

This page was updated as of February 24, 2026. To submit updates or change requests, please email vpue@berkeley.edu.

Guide to the 150 Years of Women at UC Berkeley Mural

Background

Explore the Mural

Acknowledgements