February 21, 2022
Lee Julian Purnell (1896-1983), Berkeley’s earliest known Black EE student
Lee Julian Purnell is the first Black student known to have graduated from the EECS department. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1896, graduated from Berkeley High in 1915, earned a B.A. from Cal in 1919, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1921, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Berkeley in 1929. He settled into a career at Howard University where he eventually became Dean of Engineering.
