Cal alumnus Barry Barish (B.S. ‘57, Ph.D. ‘62) wins the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics!

Double-Bear Barry Barish is one of three men who won the Nobel Prize in Physics!

(Does Barish earn the prize for Cal Nobel laureate with the second–most appropriate name after Glenn Seaborg, whose surname is an anagram for “Go Bears”?)

Barish earned his B.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics from UC Berkeley, which means he 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.

Here’s a simplified explanation made for late-night television, thanks to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

This is so cool—I wish I were smart enough to understand this. Maybe if we all ask nicely, our local physicist Ruey Yen will explain this for legal morons like myself?