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Robert Zimmer

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For the German philosopher and essayist, see Robert Zimmer (philosopher).
Robert Zimmer
Zimmer in 2009
3rd Chancellor of the University of Chicago
In office
September 1, 2021 – July 7, 2022
Preceded byPosition reestablished
Succeeded byPosition held in abeyance
13th President of the University of Chicago
In office
July 1, 2006 – August 31, 2021
Preceded byDon Michael Randel
Succeeded byA. Paul Alivisatos
Personal details
Born
Robert Jeffrey Zimmer

(1947-11-05)November 5, 1947
New York City, U.S.
DiedMay 23, 2023(2023-05-23) (aged 75)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Spouses
  • Terese Schwartzman
    ​
    (divorced)​
  • ​
    (m. 2011)​
Children3
Education

Robert Jeffrey Zimmer (November 5, 1947 – May 23, 2023) was an American mathematician and academic administrator. From 2006 until 2021, he served as the 13th president of the University of Chicago and as the Chair of the Board for Argonne National Lab, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory,[1] and the Marine Biological Laboratory.[2] He then served as chancellor of the University of Chicago until July 2022. As a mathematician, Zimmer specialized in geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry.

Education and work experience

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Zimmer graduated from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1964.[3] He matriculated to Brandeis University as an undergraduate, earning his B.A., summa cum laude, in 1968.[4] He conducted his mathematics graduate study at Harvard University, receiving his master's degree in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1975 under the supervision of George Mackey.[5] 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.[4] 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.[4] He returned to the University of Chicago as president in 2006.

University of Chicago presidency

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As president, Zimmer pushed for major academic initiatives at Chicago,[6] including increased financial aid for students in the undergraduate College and the elimination of loans from financial aid packages;[7] increased funding for doctoral students, particularly in humanities and social sciences;[8] the University of Chicago's first engineering program, which began as the Institute for Molecular Engineering[9] and is now the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering; new programs and facilities in the arts;[10] and the establishment of the Becker-Friedman Institute for Research in Economics,[11] the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society, and the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge.[12] During Zimmer's presidency, the University of Chicago expanded its presence locally with the launch of the Urban Education Institute[13] and globally with the launch of the Center in Beijing,[14] the Center in Delhi,[15] and The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex/The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong.[16]

Under Zimmer's administration applications to the undergraduate College increased from under 10,000 in 2006[17] to over 32,000 in 2018.[18] The University adopted a policy of meeting full financial need of its undergraduate students with no loan expectations, creating the capacity for them to graduate debt-free.[19] Recent efforts to increase access to the University include UChicago Promise, which provides aid and college guidance to students in the city of Chicago; the Neubauer Family Adelante Programs, which offers financial support for students engaged in Hispanic/Latino communities; the UChicago Emerging Rural Leaders Program, which offers on-campus programming, mentoring, and financial aid for students from rural communities; and the Office for Military-Affiliated Communities, which supports programs and partnerships for recruitment, enrollment and other services for veterans and their dependents.[20]

During Zimmer's tenure the University of Chicago received six gifts of $100 million or more (totaling $850M): an anonymous $100 million donation to fund the undergraduate Odyssey scholarship program;[21] a $300 million donation to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business;[22] a $100 million donation to establish The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts and The Pearson Global Forum at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies;[23] a $150 million for the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics; $100 million for the Duchossois Family Institute: Harnessing the Microbiome and Immunity for Human Health; and a $100 million donation to initially establish and fund the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.

In 2014, Zimmer formed the Committee on Freedom of Expression whose report came to be known as the Chicago principles, a set of guidelines intended to demonstrate The University of Chicago's commitment to freedom of speech.[24] The Chicago Principles were adopted by more than 65 colleges and universities.[25] As Zimmer noted in an address to the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2017, the work of faculty and students to confront new and different ideas through education and research "only happens at the highest level in an environment of rigor, questioning, and free and open discourse."[26] Zimmer also spoke on the importance of these ideas in the keynote address at the University of Vienna's Academic Freedom in the Digital Age conference.[27]

Under Zimmer's guidance, the University of Chicago sent a letter to incoming freshmen in August 2016 telling them that "we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own."[28]

An Associated Press report found Zimmer to be the highest-paid college president in the United States in 2011, with total compensation of $3.4 million in that year.[29]

On August 13, 2020, Zimmer announced that he would step down as president at the conclusion of the 2020–2021 academic year and that he would shift to the role of chancellor; he originally had planned to serve through 2022, but acknowledged that brain surgery he had undergone in May 2020 had accelerated his transition.[30] On July 7, 2022, he stepped down from his role as chancellor to focus on his health.[31]

Mathematical work

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Zimmer's work centered on group actions on manifolds and more general spaces, with applications to topology and geometry. Much of his work was in the area now known as the "Zimmer Program" which aims to understand the actions of semisimple Lie groups and their discrete subgroups on differentiable manifolds.[32]

Crucial to this program is "Zimmer's cocycle superrigidity theorem", a generalization of Grigory Margulis's superrigidity theorem. Like Margulis's work, which greatly influenced Zimmer, it uses ergodic theory as a central technique in the case of invariant measures.[33] It led to many results within the Zimmer Program, although many of the main conjectures remain open.[5] In addition to Margulis, Zimmer was greatly influenced by the work of Mikhail Gromov on rigid transformation groups and he extended and connected Gromov's theory to the Zimmer Program.[32]

Zimmer collaborated with a number of mathematicians to apply the ideas from the Zimmer Program to other areas of mathematics. His collaboration with Alexander Lubotzky applied some of these ideas to arithmetic results on fundamental groups of manifolds.[34] In collaboration with François Labourie and Shahar Mozes, cocycle superrigidity ideas were applied to the basic problem of the existence of compact locally homogeneous spaces of certain types.[35] His collaboration with Amos Nevo concerned actions with stationary measure and provided certain basic structure theorems for such actions of higher rank semisimple groups.[36] Zimmer's earlier work provided a proof of a conjecture of Alain Connes on orbit equivalence of actions of semisimple groups, and introduced the basic notion of amenable group action.[37]

Personal life

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Zimmer was married to Terese Schwartzman, former director of strategic initiatives for the university's Urban Education Institute, but they separated in September 2009 and later divorced. They had three sons.[3] In October 2011, he married University of Chicago classics professor Shadi Bartsch.[38]

Zimmer was diagnosed with glioblastoma in May 2020.[39] He died in Chicago on May 23, 2023, at age 75.[40][41][42][43]

Honors

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Fermi Research Alliance Board of Directors". Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. 2014. Archived from the original on September 1, 2018. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  2. ^ "MBL Officers and Trustees". Marine Biological Laboratory. April 12, 2014. Archived from the original on September 5, 2015. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  3. ^ a b Yoe, Mary Ruth. "Back to the future – Mathematician Robert J. Zimmer will return to the quads this July as Chicago's next president. And it all adds up". Archived from the original on August 19, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
  4. ^ a b c "Zimmer elected 13th President of University". chronicle.uchicago.edu. Archived from the original on June 17, 2010. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
  5. ^ a b Lipkin, Michael Lipkin (March 5, 2010). "The Zimmer Program". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on May 10, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  6. ^ Rachowin, Blake (January 23, 2007). "Zimmer projects major reforms at faculty meeting". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2013.
  7. ^ "Alum gives U. Chicago $100M for low-income scholarships". USA Today. May 31, 2007. Archived from the original on June 11, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  8. ^ "President Zimmer announces additional $50 million in aid for graduate students in Social Sciences, Humanities" (Press release). February 7, 2007. Archived from the original on November 13, 2007. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
  9. ^ Coryne, Harunobu (April 5, 2011). "Molecular Engineering Director named". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on June 3, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  10. ^ Henning, Joel (September 11, 2012). "Where Theory and Practice Make Perfect". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 11, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  11. ^ "Becker Friedman Institute established at University of Chicago". University of Chicago News Office. June 17, 2011. Archived from the original on March 23, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  12. ^ Catlin, Jon (October 9, 2012). "Sosc prof leads collegium to bring foreign scholars to campus". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  13. ^ Haederle, Michael. "Chicago Charter Schools Aim to Lift Urban Education". 2011-08-23: Pacific Standard. Archived from the original on January 25, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  14. ^ Mack, Kristen (April 28, 2010). "U. of C. will open Beijing center". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on June 10, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  15. ^ "University of Chicago opens centre in Delhi". The Economic Times. March 30, 2014. Archived from the original on April 5, 2014. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  16. ^ Chiu, Peace (September 26, 2018). "University of Chicago unveils sleek Hong Kong complex on site of former Victoria Road Detention Centre". The Economic Times. Archived from the original on December 2, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  17. ^ Rachowin, Blake (February 20, 2007). "College sees record number of applications". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on December 26, 2011. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  18. ^ Grieve, Pete (May 3, 2018). "Acceptance Rate Plummets to 7.2 Percent for Class of 2022". The Chicago Maroon. Archived from the original on December 10, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  19. ^ "UChicago Empower Initiative Adds Diversity to Student Body". WTTW News. August 8, 2019. Archived from the original on August 9, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  20. ^ "UChicago offers new resource for military-affiliated students, faculty and staff". University of Chicago Communications. November 7, 2018. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  21. ^ Cohen, Jodi S. (May 31, 2007). "A $100 million mystery". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
  22. ^ Guth, Robert (November 7, 2008). "Chicago Business School Gets Huge Gift". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on June 11, 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  23. ^ Glanton, Dahleen (September 30, 2015). "U. of C. gets $100 million donation to study global conflict". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on December 1, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
  24. ^ "Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression" (PDF). University of Chicago Office of the Provost. January 1, 2015. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 13, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  25. ^ "Chicago Statement: University and Faculty Body Support". Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). November 6, 2019. Archived from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  26. ^ "Chicago Humanities Festival Address". University of Chicago Office of the President. July 29, 2017. Archived from the original on December 16, 2019. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  27. ^ "Academic Freedom in the Digital Age". University of Vienna ("Universität Wien"). September 16, 2019. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019. Retrieved December 15, 2019.
  28. ^ Why the University of Chicago Opposes 'Trigger Warnings' Archived May 11, 2019, at the Wayback Machine by Douglas Belkin in The Wall Street Journal Archived May 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, February 20, 2017
  29. ^ "Top 10 earning private college presidents in 2011". The Guardian. AP Foreign. December 15, 2013. Archived from the original on December 16, 2013. Retrieved December 15, 2013.
  30. ^ "University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer to transition into role as chancellor in 2021". news.uchicago.edu. August 13, 2020. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved August 13, 2020. While he agreed in 2017 to serve as president through at least 2022, Zimmer announced his intentions to accelerate his planned transition from the role of president at an Aug. 12 Board of Trustees meeting. Zimmer had surgery in May to remove a malignant brain tumor...
  31. ^ "Robert J. Zimmer steps down from position as University of Chicago chancellor". news.uchicago.edu. July 7, 2022. Archived from the original on July 7, 2022. Retrieved July 7, 2022.
  32. ^ a b Farb, Benson; Fisher, David (2011). Geometry, Rigidity, and Group Actions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780226237909. Archived from the original on February 19, 2015. Retrieved November 14, 2013.
  33. ^ Karl E. Petersen; Spatzier, R. J. (1995). Karl E. Petersen; Ibrahim Salama (eds.). Ergodic theory and its connection with harmonic analysis : proceedings of the 1993 Alexandria conference. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 164, 183. ISBN 978-0521459990. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  34. ^ Lubotzky, Alexander; Robert J. Zimmer. "Arithmetic structure of fundamental groups and actions of semisimple Lie groups" (PDF). Preprint. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2013. Retrieved January 25, 2013. 1997/98
  35. ^ Labourie, Francois; Shahar Mozes; Robert J. Zimmer (1995). "On manifolds locally modelled on non-riemannian homogeneous spaces". Geometric and Functional Analysis. 5 (6): 955–65. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.7.7971. doi:10.1007/BF01902217. S2CID 14099412.
  36. ^ Nevo, Amos; Robert Zimmer (November 1999). "Homogenous projective factors for actions of semi-simple Lie groups". Inventiones Mathematicae. 138 (2): 229–252. Bibcode:1999InMat.138..229N. doi:10.1007/s002220050377. S2CID 121268089.
  37. ^ Furman, Alex (August 8, 2010). "A Survey of Measured Group Theory". arXiv:0901.0678 [math.DS].
  38. ^ "Chicago Maroon". Archived from the original on October 17, 2011. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
  39. ^ "University of Chicago Chancellor Robert Zimmer steps down due to health concerns". CBS News. July 11, 2022. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  40. ^ "Robert J. Zimmer, chancellor emeritus and 13th president of the University of Chicago, 1947–2023". news.uchicago.edu. May 23, 2023. Retrieved May 23, 2023.
  41. ^ Strahler, Steven R. (May 23, 2023). "Robert Zimmer, longtime University of Chicago president, has died". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  42. ^ Dudek, Mitch (May 24, 2023). "Robert J. Zimmer, who championed free speech as head of University of Chicago for 15 years, dies at 75". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  43. ^ "Robert Zimmer, 1947–2023". The Wall Street Journal. May 24, 2023. Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  44. ^ "Alphabetical Index of Active Members" (PDF). Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. November 11, 2011. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 27, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  45. ^ Sy, Mark (April 27, 2011). "President of the University of Chicago Receives Honorary Doctorate from Tsinghua". Tsinghua News Center. Archived from the original on February 13, 2016. Retrieved January 24, 2013.
  46. ^ "Colby Announces Inauguration Details, Honorary Degree Recipients". Colby Office of Communication. September 4, 2014. Archived from the original on November 29, 2020. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  47. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Archived August 25, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, retrieved September 1, 2013.
  48. ^ "ACTA Announces Robert Zimmer as 2017 Philip Merrill Award Recipient". American Council of Trustees and Alumni. May 11, 2017. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  49. ^ "Celebrating Our 2021 Honorary Degree Recipients". Brandis University. May 23, 2021. Archived from the original on July 24, 2021. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
  50. ^ "Clark Kerr Award | Academic Senate". academic-senate.berkeley.edu. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
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