Albert Bowker was
chancellor of
UC Berkeley from 1971 through 1980. He has also been an administrator at
Stanford,
CUNY, and a few other educational institutions. He served in the Education Department under
Jimmy Carter for a short time, but was sacked when
Ronald Reagan became president.
Born in 1919 to a Massachusetts family in the furniture business, Bowker has been married twice (once divorced, once widowed) and has three children: a son, Paul, and twin daughters, Nancy and Caroline. He has five grandchildren, eight year old twin boys and three year old triplets. His claim is that these multiples are all due to late childbirths and fertility drugs
He enjoys Heritage brand cereal and a grapefruit for breakfast every morning over the New York Times, then heads to Evans Hall on the Cal campus, where his office is. He has a meal service that delivers his dinners.
Al Bowker is an avid reader, and regularly buys books on Amazon. He has a particular recent interest in the Alsos mission of WWII, which (if I have my facts straight) was the mission to capture the German scientists who had been working on the atomic bomb project. His other main interest is in East Bay and San Francisco theater, notably ACT, Shotgun Players, and Berkeley Rep.
On weekends, he visits his grandchildren in Palo Alto and watches Book Notes on CSPAN. I think his life is pretty full.
He is a member of the Bohemian Club, and he spends part of the summer in London watching plays there.