Berkeley, Edmund C. (Edmund Callis)

Description

This folder contains correspondence, notes, memoranda, lists, reports, reference material, financial records, publications, and/or photographs relating to Edmund C. Berkeley's work with civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s. Edmund Callis Berkeley received a BA in mathematics and logic from Harvard University in 1930 after which he worked for Mutual Life Insurance of New York as an actuarial clerk. In 1934 he took a position with Prudential Insurance of America where he eventually became chief research consultant. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Berkeley felt it was his duty to work against nuclear war and quit Prudential to set up his own business, Berkeley Associates, in 1948. Shortly after the establishment of his company, Berkeley wrote one of the first books on electronic computers for a general audience, Giant Brains, Or Machines That Think(1949), and began research on robotics. Throughout his career Berkeley was deeply involved in social action groups organized around the peace movement and for civil rights. This folder includes materials covering Berkeley's involvement with social action groups relating to the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement and racial equality.

Record Contributed By

University of Minnesota Libraries