The antiproton, discovered in 1955 by a team led by Dr. Chamberlain and another Berkeley physicist, Emilio Segrè, was the second bit of antimatter that physicists had created in what were then referred to as atom smashers.

If you could go down to the corner hardware store and say you want wire," said Marvin Cohen, a Berkeley physicist, "and if they would say, 'What kind do you want, normal or superconducting?'

Paul Richards, a Berkeley physicist, called it a "little bump" in the background radiation, but said it could represent a tremendous amount of extra energy being created after the formation of atoms.

Berkeley physicists worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and the university now manages the nation's two principal nuclear weapons laboratories: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It was discovered by University of California, Berkeley physicists Thomas Ypsilantis, Emilio Segrè, Clyde Wiegand, and Owen Chamberlain in 1955.

However, the invention of the aqualung in 1943 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and the wetsuit in 1952 by University of California, Berkeley physicist, Hugh Bradner and its development over subsequent years led to a revolution in recreational diving.

Seaborg also became an expert in dealing with noted Berkeley physicist Robert Oppenheimer.

"It's up to my colleagues to name it," he said, "but I think my vote will be for alvarezium, to honor the late great Berkeley physicist, Luis Alvarez," Mr. Ghiorso said.

Even "skeptics" admit the world is warming: A study funded in part by the Charles G. Koch Foundation and led by Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-described global-warming skeptic, concluded that the...