Joseph T. Gier (1910-1961) was raised in Oakland by a single mother who supported her family as a domestic servant. Against the odds, he came to Berkeley in 1930, became the president of his fraternity, and was one of the first Black students on campus to earn a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering (’33). Unlike most of his white peers, he was not able to find a job in his chosen profession, so he returned to campus and worked as a lab assistant while completing an M.S. in Engineering ('40). He stayed on at the lab conducting experiments into the properties of heat and light, and was hired as a part-time lecturer by the EE department in 1944. He was said to be an extraordinary teacher who was able to convey “the physical significance in mathematical abstractions'' with dexterity and grace to a classroom of white students during a period of deep national segregation. Gier was a role model to a generation of students and colleagues in the years preceding the Civil Rights Movement, when African Americans were rarely permitted to hold prominent positions of power or authority. He co-invented and patented several instruments used to measure thermal and luminous radiation, became a world authority in his field, and was a very early proponent of solar energy as a renewable resource. His devices were used in the earliest days of aerospace exploration to harness solar energy as well to develop materials that could withstand the rigors of space. He became the first tenured Black professor in the UC system when he was hired as an Associate Professor of EE in 1952. He transferred to UCLA to pursue his research into solar energy shortly before his premature death in 1961. Joseph Gier was a local Cal hero at the forefront of science and engineering who quietly nurtured and influenced students and colleagues of all races for decades. He seems to have disappeared from the public Berkeley record around 2003, possibly because he arrived here too early for the significance of his achievements to be fully recognized.

Please join us in rectifying this historical oversight by contributing to the Joseph Gier Memorial Fund!