Early UC San Diego History Traced
in Talk by UC President Emeritus Richard Atkinson

Pat Jacoby | January 26, 2009

Richard C. Atkinson

The University of California, San Diego underwent seven name changes in the early years of its founding, noted former UC San Diego Chancellor and UC President Emeritus Richard Atkinson in a Jan. 20 lecture sponsored by the La Jolla Historical Society.

The institution’s first name, said Atkinson, was the Marine Biological Association, established after E.W. Scripps and Ellen Browning Scripps had committed to helping William Ritter and his Marine Biology Field Station.

In 1912, the institution was transferred to the University of California, and the name changed to Scripps Institution of Biological Research. Other names, such as the University of California Division of War Research in San Diego, and the University of California at La Jolla, followed.

Atkinson said the UC Regents formally approved the title of University of California at San Diego in 1960, after a contentious several years involving the placement of the campus.

In what he termed a newly discovered fact, Atkinson said that in the late 1950’s Regent Ed Pauley had suggested that instead of building a new university, UC acquire San Diego State College (now SDSU). Because of the noise factor from Miramar Air Station, Pauley also argued for placing the campus in Balboa Park, since “no more than 1,000 students” were anticipated.

Following Atkinson’s talk on the years 1912 to 1960, Jonathan Singer, emeritus professor of biology, described the “incomparable” years when the UC San Diego faculty was being assembled. “The first five years I spent at UCSD were an academic heaven,” Singer said. “What happened was astonishing; people who arrived were brilliant, setting a tone and course for the future.”

Everyone came from Harvard, Princeton or Yale, he said, and they had a clear idea of what they wanted to do in starting the university. “There was the sense of doing something new, getting something done.”

Asked by an audience member if it would be difficult to start another campus like UC San Diego, Atkinson said “it was a golden moment in time; no other university started at the same time equals this.”