In 1885, the Hitchcock Endowment Fund was established from a bequest made by Dr. Charles M. Hitchcock to institute a professorship at the University of California for free lectures upon scientific and practical subjects. Dr. Hitchcock, whose longstanding interest in education inspired his contribution, was a physician and served as medical director of the Pacific Coast in the United States Army Medical Corps. The Hitchcock Foundation Lectures began in 1909 and were later expanded and retitled the Charles M. and Martha Hitchcock Lectures in 1932, thanks to a generous bequest from Dr. Hitchcock's daughter, Lillie Hitchcock Coit.
| Title | Lecturer | Year |
| How Decisions Happen in Organizations | James March | 1994 |
| Learning in Organizations | John March | 1994 |
| Photochemistry in an Ordered Universe – Using Light as a Scalpel, and a Crystal as Operating Table | John Polanyi | 1994 |
| The Responsibility of the Scientist in an Age of Science | John Polanyi | 1994 |
| Present Status of the Standard Model in Particle Physics | Carlo Rubbia | 1994 |
| Beyond the Standard Model | Carlo Rubbia | 1994 |
| Mobile DNA: Ubiquitous and Unusual Genetic Elements | Maxine Singer | 1993 |
| Mobile Genetic Elements in Mammals | Maxine Singer | 1993 |
| Line-1: A Mobile Element in the Human Genome | Maxine Singer | 1993 |
| A Piece of Sunshine | Hendrick van de Hulst | 1993 |
| Far from the Stars – in the Midst of Astronomy | Hendrick van de Hulst | 1993 |
| How Does a Glue Work? | Pierre-Gilles de Gennes | 1992 |
| Ultradivided Matter | Pierre-Gilles de Gennes | 1992 |
| Classical Conditioning: Is There a Cellular Alphabet for Learning? | Eric Kandel | 1992 |
| Sensitization: The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory | Eric Kandel | 1992 |
| Habituation: A Reductionist’s Strategy to the Study of Procedural Learning | Eric Kandel | 1992 |
| Cell and Molecular Biological Approaches to Learning and Memory | Eric Kandel | 1992 |
| The Fractal Geometry of Nature’s Complexity | Benoit Mandelbrot | 1992 |
| Fractals: For the Pleasure of the Mind and the Pleasure of the Eye | Benoit Mandelbrot | 1992 |
| Why Did It Take So Long? The Nature and Origins of Magnetic Resonance Imaging | Paul C. Lauterbur | 1991 |
| Cultures | Clifford Geertz | 1990 |
| Countries | Clifford Geertz | 1990 |
| Towns | Clifford Geertz | 1990 |
| Anthropologist | Clifford Geertz | 1990 |
| After the Fact: Indonesia, Morocco and the Recurrent | Clifford Geertz | 1990 |
| Qualitative Reasoning: How We Think Our Way through the Day | Herbert Simon | 1990 |
| Liberal Education: The View From Cognitive Science | Herbert Simon | 1990 |
| Literary Criticism as Cognitive Science | Herbert Simon | 1990 |
| The Big Bang Revisited Early Nucleosynthesis in an Inhomogeneous Universe | William Fowler | 1989 |
| The Age of the Observable Universe | William Fowler | 1989 |
| Estimating the Inestimable II | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| Estimating the Inestimable I | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| What Hopes for Progress: How Can We Realize Human Potential? | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| What Hopes for Plenty: Can We Abolish Poverty | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| What Hopes for Peace: Can We Abolish War? | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| What Hopes for a Better World | Kenneth Boulding | 1989 |
| Direction of Time | Stephen Hawking | 1988 |
| Black Holes, White Holes, and Worm Holes | Stephen Hawking | 1988 |
| Origin of the Universe | Stephen Hawking | 1988 |
| Is Biology an Autonomous Science? | Ernst Mayr | 1987 |
| Current Controversies in Evolutionary Biology | Ernst Mayr | 1987 |
| The Transforming Gene of a Leukemia Virus | David Baltimore | 1987 |
| Control of Antibody Gene Expression | David Baltimore | 1987 |
| Geometry and Physics: The Future | Sir Michael F. Atiyah | 1987 |
| Geometry and Physics: The Past | Sir Michael F. Atiyah | 1987 |
| Enzymology to the Rescue of Medicine | Frank H. Westheimer | 1987 |
| Are Our Universities Rotten at the ‘Core’? | Frank H. Westheimer | 1987 |
| Ecological Aspects of Disease in Human Populations | Robert M. May | 1986 |
| When Two and Two Do Not Make Four: Nonlinear Problems in Ecology | Robert M. May | 1986 |
| Toward Healthy Development in Childhood and Adolescence | David A. Hamburg | 1986 |
| International Cooperation for Health in Developing Countries | David A. Hamburg | 1986 |
| Avoiding Nuclear War: Crisis Prevention and U.S. – Soviet Relations | David A. Hamburg, | 1986 |
| Evolutionary Biotechnology | Manfred Eigen | 1985 |
| Optimization in the Universe of Nucleic Acid Sequences | Manfred Eigen | 1985 |
| Replication Kinetics and the Concept of Quasi-Species | Manfred Eigen | 1985 |
| Medical Technology Assessment in the Nation: Present State and Future Needs | Frederick Mosteller | 1985 |
| Contributions of Meta-Analysis to Statistics and Health | Frederick Mosteller | 1985 |
| Frontiers of Health Assessment | Frederick Mosteller | 1985 |
| Mythical Thought and Social Life | Claude Levi-Strauss | 1984 |
| The Birth of Historical Societies | Claude Levi-Strauss | 1984 |
| Non-Linear Optics and Spectroscopy | Nicolaas Bloembergen | 1984 |
| Lasers in Science and Technology | Nicolaas Bloembergen | 1984 |
| Spectroscopic Studies in Astrochemistry | Gerhard Herzberg | 1983 |
| Molecular Spectra and Molecular Structure | Gerhard Herzberg | 1983 |
| Chemical Bonds in Biology | Linus Pauling | 1983 |
| The Development of the Concept of the Chemical Bond | Linus Pauling | 1983 |
| Questions Arising from My Model and Others | Freeman J. Dyson | 1982 |
| An Abstract Model for the Origin of Life | Freeman J. Dyson | 1982 |
| Experimental and Theoretical Background | Freeman J. Dyson | 1982 |
| Origins of Life | Freeman J. Dyson | 1982 |
| The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: Beyond Function | Ada Louise Huxtable | 1982 |
| The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered: Beyond Style | Ada Louise Huxtable | 1982 |
| Unique and Unusual Patterning of Behaviour as a Consequence of Isolation | Carleton Gajdusek | 1982 |
| Genetic, Toxic, and Deficiency Diseases in High Incidence in Isolated Populations | Carleton Gajdusek | 1982 |
| Infectious Diseases in Isolated Populations | Carleton Gajdusek | 1982 |
| The Primeval Moon: Magnetism and Polar Wandering | S. Keith Runcorn | 1981 |
| A Modern Scientific Controversy: Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics | S. Keith Runcorn | 1981 |
| Entropy, Structure and Fluctuations | Ilya Prigogine | 1981 |
| Life in a Magnetic Field | Edward M. Purcell | 1981 |
| A Physicist Looks, a Bacterium | Edward M. Purcell | 1981 |
| When Are Computers Better Than We Realized? | Samuel Winograd | 1980 |
| Why Are Computers Worse Than We Hoped? | Samuel Winograd | 1980 |
| Neuronal Plasticity During Development | Torsten N. Wiesel | 1980 |
| Single Cell Analysis and Functional Architecture | Torsten N. Wiesel | 1980 |
| The Metafont Method of Alphabet Design | Donald E. Knuth | 1979 |
| Typesetting with the Aid of Mathematics | Donald E. Knuth | 1979 |
| Towards an Integrated Science of Inter-Personal Relationships | Robert A. Hinde | 1979 |
| The Dynamics of the Parent-Offspring Relationship | Robert A. Hinde | 1979 |
| The Development of Parent-Infant Attachment | Robert A. Hinde | 1979 |
| The Design and Construction of Early Iron Arch Bridges, 1779-1830 | Alec W. Skempton | 1978 |
| Hill-Slopes in the Weald of Kent: Stability Analysis and Pleistocene Geology | Alec W. Skempton | 1978 |
| The House of Humphry Davy: Reflections on the Bicentenary of His Birth | Sir George Porter | 1978 |
| Science and the Human Purpose | Sir George Porter | 1978 |
| Life Under the Sun | Sir George Porter | 1978 |
| A Catastrophe Model for Anorexia Nervosa and Its Cure | E. Christopher Zeeman | 1977 |
| An Introduction to Catastrophe Theory | E. Christopher Zeeman | 1977 |
| Mouse Teratocarcinoma and Embryonic Development | Fran Jacob | 1977 |
| Evolution and Tinkering | Fran Jacob | 1977 |
| What is an Elementary Particle? | Victor F. Weisskopf | 1976 |
| The Frontiers and Limits of Science | Victor F. Weisskopf | 1976 |
