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Scientific glassblower continues century-old campus tradition (2021)

Jim Breen has been the campus’s glassblower for 18 years. (UC Berkeley video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally) To find Room B63 in the nondescript, industrial basement of UC Berkeley’s Hildebrand Hall, it’s best to follow your ears.

Breen, who enjoys collaborating with researchers, welcomes them to what he jokingly calls his “altar of ideas” — a tabletop in his shop where he patiently listens to their plans, looks at their sketches — or helps them make a few — and even interprets their hand gestures to determine the right custom glass apparatus for their experiments. Stable isotope geochemist Max Lloyd brought Breen pipe cleaners twisted into various shapes to simulate the five specialized glass pieces he needed for his climate change work. The finished tubes would snap onto an enormous glass chemistry apparatus — a so-called Schlenk, or vacuum, line — that Breen has built and installed in the lab of Daniel Stolper, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science.

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