Robert Zimmer

Robert Jeffrey Zimmer (November 5, 1947 – May 23, 2023) was an American mathematician and academic administrator. He served as the 13th president of the University of Chicago from July 2006 to August 2021 and as the honorary 3rd chancellor of the university from September 2021 to July 2022. His academic research focused on geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry. Zimmer graduated from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1964. He matriculated to Brandeis University as an undergraduate, earning a B.A., summa cum laude, in 1968. He conducted his mathematics graduate study at Harvard University, receiving a master's degree in 1971 and a Ph.D. in 1975, under the supervision of George Mackey. He taught at the United States Naval Academy from 1975 to 1977, and moved to the mathematics department of the University of Chicago in 1977. From 1981 to 1983, he was a professor in the mathematics department of University of California, Berkeley. He was on the mathematics faculty and held several administrative positions at the University of Chicago, including Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, Deputy Provost, and Vice President for Research and Argonne National Laboratory, before he moved to Brown University as provost in 2002. He returned to the University of Chicago as president in 2006.