For theoretical computer science, Berkeley in 80s and 90s was a fantastic place: the foundations of cryptography and complexity theory were developed here. A sa

For theoretical computer science, Berkeley in 80s and 90s was a fantastic place: the foundations of cryptography and complexity theory were developed here. A sample: Goldwasser, Micali, Blum, Impagliazzo, Rudich, Arora, Sudan, Karp, the Vazirani's, Rubenfeld, Naor, Sipser, and more. These are the who's who of cryptography and complexity theory, and they all overlapped in time over 1982-92.