University Of California Berkeley Alumni

"In 1943 fear that the German war machine might use s was abating and among s another fear was taking its place - that of a postwar nuclear arms race with worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons. Manhattan Project scientists and engineers began to discuss uses of in the postwar world. Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, James A. Franck and others launched a concerted effort to lay groundwork for international control of the technology. Realizing the devastation nuclear weapons could cause and that they could be made and delivered much more cheaply than conventional weapons of the same power, they tried to persuade policy makers to take into account long range consequences of using atomic bombs and not base their decisions on short range military expediency alone. They met with little success. The scientists' main message, unheeded then and very relevant now, is that worldwide international agreements are needed to provide for inspection and control of nuclear weapons technology. Their memoranda and reports remain as historic documents eloquently testifying to their concern."

"Enrico Fermi lived from 1901 to 1954, a period of great progress in physics and a period in which opportunities for women to study and work in institutions of higher learning increased significantly in Europe and North America. Though there are a few examples of women who made important contributions to physics in the 18th century such as and , it was only in Fermi's time that the number began to increase significantly. It is remarkable that almost immediately after they gained entrance to laboratories and universities, among them appeared women of great creative ability who made lasting contributions to physics. This talk is mainly about some of these whose scientific lives are not as well known as their contributions deserve — Emmy Noether, , , . Additionally, some outstanding women whose work played a role in Enrico Fermi's life in physics are noted - , , , and ."

"Although she was primarily a particle theorist, her most important work may well be her contribution to our understanding of superconductivity. She was a trailblazer for and, in her retirement, led the effort to chronicle the contributions of women to physics in the 20th century."

"Emmy Noether proved two deep theorems, and their converses, on the connection between and s. Because these theorems are not in the mainstream of her scholarly work, which was the development of modern abstract algebra, it is of some historical interest to examine how she came to make these discoveries. The present paper is an historical account of the circumstances in which she discovered and proved these theorems which physicists refer to collectively as . The work was done soon after . The failure of local energy conservation in the general theory was a problem that concerned people at that time, among them David Hilbert, Felix Klein, and Albert Einstein. Noether's theorems solved this problem. With her characteristically deep insight and thorough analysis, in solving that problem she discovered very general theorems that have profoundly influenced modern physics."

"When you’re going through a hard time on the opposite side of the struggle there’s always the beauty of the gift that comes from the struggle"

"Having faith is being grateful and finding the gratitude"

"Even though I’m happy about the Oscars this year and there were so many black nominees, film has a ways to go. It’s not looking like the world we’re living in. We’re making progress — I’ve seen it firsthand. But it’s not reflecting this melting pot just yet."

"I’ve read the Koran, I’ve read Indian scriptures and I really like taking from them all"

"I think it’s important for people to have somebody who’s objective, and who’s not necessarily a friend or family"

"When I first started in the business 20 years ago, I could count on one hand how many black actresses were working, and now I don’t even know them all"

"The greatest character actor is going to bring an aspect of themselves"

"she is every mother regardless of race"

"A person who knows how to act can better direct an actor"

"sometimes I think people cast people on an intuitive level, they don’t even know they’re doing it, but this has happened a lot where you have a real connection with the person"

"TV is starting to look like the world we live in"

"The more vivid an imagination you have, [the more it] brings reality to the story that you’re telling, and the more the audience will be brought in"

"I definitely am more spiritual than I am religious"

"It crossed all racial and cultural lines."

"I almost made my Broadway debut much sooner"

"Nobody ever overcomes the phantasms of his childhood. The man is the corrupt dream of the child, and since there is only decay, and no time, what we call days and evenings are the false angels of our existence. There is nothing except sleep and the moon between the boy and the man; dogs dream and bay the moon, who is the mother of the unconscious. Sorrow and pleasure are the stuff of dreams and the energies of myriads of planets. What is the space between the boy and the man? Did the child who is now the man ever live? Did Christ exist and was Brutus at Philippi? The centuries that divide one from Jesus and Brutus contain no time. We still hear the tinkling of the sheep bells at Mamre, and Abraham continues to sleep beneath the terebinths just as Saul sits and broods underneath a tamarisk—but all these are "thoughts of the visions of the night.""

"Nobody heard her tears; the heart is a fountain of weeping water which makes no noise in the world."

"When the image of her comes up on a sudden—just as my bad demons do—and I see again her dyed henna hair, the eyes dwarfed by the electric lights in the Star Lady Barber Shop, and the dear, broken wing of her mouth, and when I regard her wild tatters, I know that not even Solomon in his lilied raiment was so glorious as my mother in her rags. Selah."

"There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment."

"When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels."

"Woman is the most superstitious animal beneath the moon. When a woman has a premonition that Tuesday will be a disaster, to which a man pays no heed, he will very likely lose his fortune then. This is not meant to be an occult or mystic remark. The female body is a vessel, and the universe drops its secrets into her far more quickly than it communicates them to the male."

"What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore."

"Bosch is great because what he imagines in color can be translated into justice."

"Let the bard from Smyrna catalogue Harma, the ledges and caves of Thaca, the milk-fed damsels of Achaia, pigeon-flocked Thisbe or the woods of Onchestus, I sing of Oak, Walnut, Chesnut, Maple and Elm Streets."

"The greater part of your misogamy is venal; the other cause of your invective humbug is that you're a muggish homuncle who couldn't raise a flickering ember in a vagabond-laced mutton."

"But I like to consider myself an actor, and one of the assets that I have is that I’m black. And that I’m 6’3″! I just want to do work that gets people excited and makes them feel things, no matter their economic or racial background"

"I woke up two months ago and said “Whoa, whoa whoa! I’m an actor, how"

"My father was Muslim and my mom is Christian, and we moved from New Orleans to Oakland, so I always had this appreciation for different cultures. Between those dichotomies and with eight people living in the house together, there was always drama. But it was enjoyable drama"

"I saw a lot of people validate the history of trauma in this country, and the ways in which a traumatic event can happen to someone in one generation, and two generations later you see their offspring or their grandchildren still dealing with that. To me, that idea is very important to legitimize because we live in a society, in America specifically, that is so much in a rush to move past all the dark parts of its history. There’s so much of a rush to just put that behind us, that it often causes us to ignore, to not deal with it. And it causes us to not be able to realize the way that we still perpetuate it and create an environment for that trauma to continue to exist and persist"

"So I dedicate this award to all the Black women in my life"

"The people who believed in me first — I call you my early investors. I love you. I appreciate you. And this one is for you. Thank you"

"There’s a lot of work out there, which makes for a wide variety of creativity and conversation. And most of all, employment, for a lot of really, really good actors"

"We need people like myself with a platform to continue to speak out and to be standing and doing the right thing. And so sometimes I question whether or not I’m doing the right thing by being away from America right now. I donate my money, my time. I use my platform to amplify others’ voices, and sometimes that feels like it isn’t enough. I want to be on the ground. The people I love, my family, my close friends, the Black women in my life—they tell me to be kind to myself, to stay informed, and to stay ready. So that’s what I try to do for now"

"Black Family, don’t feel guilty for laughing and feeling joy today. We need that too"

"It's important to listen to Black women because they got the answers"

"There was such a wide variety of subject matter that it kept me on the hook. That was something that I could call my friends and family and talk about. I feel like television and film were very important over quarantine; for me, that became a way to connect to other people. And instead of talking about sports or talking about whatever event was going on, or where we were going—the variety of things that can happen in a day—my conversations, a lot of the time, switched to television"

"Everything should be about getting to the truth. But sometimes you got to know which movie or genre you’re in,"

"A few months ago I was still in school and no one knew who I was and now I’m on a show and my publicist is calling me! It’s so exciting. I’m just taking things day by day."

"I’m the youngest of six kids and I grew up with a lot of noise, a lot of music and a lot of laughter"

"I think it would be irresponsible of me to not be aware of the climate [in Hollywood] when it comes to the conversation about diversity"

"There was this collective curiosity that I didn’t even know was there. Historic disenfranchisement kept those resources out of reach to the point that many believed that our rejection of therapy was primarily cultural. I’m glad to see this narrative changing. We’ve got a lot of internal healing to do in this world, and therapy is going to be a big part of that. With the right relationship, therapy can be a safe space where we can be heard and seen in a world that too often chooses not to hear or see us"

"There’s a stigma around mental health in the Black community, particularly with men, that means we don’t talk about how we’re feeling, and it was strange to be around Black people who openly discussed seeing a therapist"

"That world is enormous. And I joined that world way into that run; a train that was already moving. Normally, I come in way early on and I get to figure it out…I was freaking out. It was a scene with [Samuel L.] Jackson, Tom [Holland]…there were a number of actors in that scene. And I remember not being able to remember my lines. I was the wooden board. And they were like, ‘Whoa"

"[Watchmen] was also a story about a god who came down to earth to reciprocate to a Black woman all the love that she deserved"

"It was frustrating. I deserved to be there. Period. That was my reminder that even if I did everything right -- played the game by the book -- some things in life would be unavoidable. Because I was Black. I was 18 years old. I did the only thing I knew to do. I cried, and I swallowed that s**t"

"I went back to my computer to work, and I remember being so angry that I cried"