A Brief History of the
Department of Food Science & Technology
in the University of California

The Department of Food Science & Technology has evolved from origins at the Berkeley campus, in the Department of Viticulture and Enology, in 1918, and the Department of Dairy Industry, in 1908.

Broad interest in the advancement of California agriculture predated statehood. The first Constitution of California, in 1849, includes the provision, "The Legislature shall encourage, by all suitable means, the promotion of intellectual, scientific, moral, and agricultural improvement." Among other influences, gifts by Congress of public lands in 1853, to support a "seminary of learning", and 1862, to establish a "college teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts", led to the legislative act creating the University of California as a complete university, including humanities as well as agriculture, mining, and mechanics. On March 23, 1868, Charter Day, Governor H. H. Haight signed this act, which stipulated that the College of Agriculture should be the first established within the University.

The Department, then termed Division, of Viticulture and Enology was organized following legislation, in 1880, and included instruction in olive culture by 1887. The subsequent origin and divergence of Food Science & Technology has been recounted briefly in FS&T's entry, in The Centennial Record of the University of California, 1868-1968.

Emil M. Mrak was an early student in the Department of Viticulture and Fruit Products. He joined the faculty in 1936, the year he received his doctorate, became Chair of the (by then separate) Department of Food Technology in 1948, and oversaw its move to Davis in 1951. He helped the campus achieve academic and administrative autonomy from Berkeley. And, in 1959, he became Chancellor of the Davis campus. Mrak's presentation at a symposium held at Davis in 1984, honoring the 75th anniversary of the campus, provides a brief personal history of these events prior to his chancellorship. His career-spanning memoir, an oral history, A Journey through Three Epochs, can be found in complete and abbreviated form.

The Department of Dairy Industry was organized upon the move and expansion of pre-existing programs from Berkeley to the University Farm School at Davisville, now Davis, in 1908. Eugene L. Jack was the last chair of the Department of Dairy Industry, from 1946 until the department was discontinued and consolidated with Food Science & Technology in 1959. In about 1966, he wrote History of the Department of Dairy Industry in the University of California, an unpublished history of the 51 years of Dairy Industry at Davis, and its antecedents at Berkeley. This is available in the Department's Library.