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For the German philosopher and essayist, see Robert Zimmer (philosopher).
Robert Jeffrey Zimmer
13th President of the University of Chicago
Incumbent
Assumed office
July 1, 2006
Preceded byDon Michael Randel
Personal details
Born (1947-11-05) November 5, 1947 (age 77)
Spouse(s)Terese Schwartzman (divorced)
Shadi Bartsch
ChildrenAlex Zimmer
Benjamin Zimmer
David Zimmer
Residence(s)Chicago, Illinois, USA
Alma materBrandeis University
Harvard University
ProfessionMathematician
WebsiteOffice of the President

Robert Jeffrey Zimmer (born November 5, 1947) is an American mathematician and academic administrator. He the 13th president of the University of Chicago[1] and serves as Chair of the Board for Argonne National Lab[2] and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.[3] As a mathematician, Zimmer specializes in geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, differential geometry and set theory.

Presidency

Zimmer's presidency to date has been marked principally by his pushing for major academic initiatives at Chicago.[4] This includes increased financial aid for students in the undergraduate College and the elimination of loans from financial aid packages for low income families;[5] increased funding for doctoral students, particularly in humanities and social sciences;[6] the University of Chicago’s first engineering program, the Institute for Molecular Engineering;[7] new programs and facilities in the arts;[8] and the establishment of the Becker-Friedman Institute for Research in Economics[9] and the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society.[10] Zimmer's presidency has also seen the University of Chicago expand its presence locally and globally with the launch of the Urban Education Institute[11] and Center in Beijing[12] respectively.

Under Zimmer's administration there have been large increases in applications to the undergraduate College: from under 10,000 in 2006[13] to over 25,000 in 2012.[14]

During Zimmer’s tenure the University of Chicago received two of the largest gifts in its history: a $100 million donation to fund undergraduate scholarships,[15] and a $300 million donation to endow the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.[16]

Mathematical work

Zimmer’s work has centered around group actions on manifolds and more general spaces, with applications to topology and geometry. Much of his work has been in the area now known as “the Zimmer program” which aims to understand the actions of semisimple Lie groups and their discrete subgroups on manifolds.[17]

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.[18] It has led to many results within the Zimmer program, although many of the main conjectures remain open.[19]

Zimmer’s collaboration with Lubotzky applied some of these ideas to arithmetic results on fundamental groups of manifolds. In collaboration with Labourie and Mozes cocycle superrigidity ideas were applied to the basic problem of the existence of compact locally homogeneous spaces of certain types. His lengthy collaboration with Nevo concerned actions with stationary measure and provided certain basic structure theorems for such actions of higher rank semisimple groups. In addition to Margulis, Zimmer was greatly influenced by the work of Gromov on rigid transformation groups and he extended and connected Gromov’s theory to the Zimmer program. Zimmer’s earlier work provided a proof of a conjecture of Connes on orbit equivalence of actions of semisimple groups, and introduced the basic notion of amenable group action.

Biography

Zimmer graduated from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1964,[20] and attended Brandeis University as an undergraduate, earning his B.A., summa cum laude, in 1968. 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. He was married to Terese Zimmer, director of strategic initiatives for the university’s Urban Education Institute, but they separated in September 2009 and later divorced. They have three grown sons. In October 2011, he married University of Chicago Classics professor Shadi Bartsch.[21] During his career, Zimmer has served as a mathematics professor at the United States Naval Academy and the University of California, Berkeley in addition to Brown and the University of Chicago. Prior to leaving for Brown, he held several administrative positions at the University of Chicago, including Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, Deputy Provost, Vice President for Research, and Vice President for Argonne National Laboratory. He has an Erdős number of 3.[22]

References

  1. ^ Ali, Hassan (2006-03-11). "Board elects Brown provost as 13th U of C president". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
  2. ^ "Argonne National Laboratory Organization Chart". Argonne National Laboratory. 2013-01-09. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
  3. ^ "Fermi Research Alliance Organization Chart" (PDF). Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. 2009-01-07. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
  4. ^ Rachowin, Blake (2007-01-23). "Zimmer projects major reforms at faculty meeting". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  5. ^ "Alum gives U. Chicago $100M for low-income scholarships". USA Today. 2007-05-31. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  6. ^ "President Zimmer announces additional $50 million in aid for graduate students in Social Sciences, Humanities" (Press release). 2007-02-07. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  7. ^ Coryne, Harunobu (2011-04-05). "Molecular Engineering Director named". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  8. ^ Henning, Joel (2012-09-11). "Where Theory and Practice Make Perfect". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  9. ^ "Becker Friedman Institute established at University of Chicago". University of Chicago News Office. 2011-06-17. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  10. ^ Catlin, Jon (2012-10-09). "Sosc prof leads collegium to bring foreign scholars to campus". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  11. ^ Haederle, Michael. "Chicago Charter Schools Aim to Lift Urban Education". 2011-08-23: Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2013-01-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  12. ^ Mack, Kristen (2010-04-28). "U. of C. will open Beijing center". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  13. ^ Rachowin, Blake (2007-02-20). "College sees record number of applications". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  14. ^ Levine, Sam (2012-01-27). "College applications jump 16 percent to record high". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  15. ^ Sink, Justin (2007-06-01). "College nets record gift for financial aid". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  16. ^ Guth, Robert (2008-11-07). "Chicago Business School Gets Huge Gift". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2013-01-24.
  17. ^ Farb, edited by Benson (2011). Geometry, Rigidity, and Group Actions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 72. ISBN 9780226237909. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); |first= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ Petersen, ed. by Karl E. (1995). Ergodic theory and its connection with harmonic analysis : proceedings of the 1993 Alexandria conference. Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. pp. 164, 183. ISBN 0521459990. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); More than one of |author= and |last= specified (help)
  19. ^ Lipkin, Michael Lipkin (2010-03-05). "The Zimmer Program". Chicago Maroon. Retrieved 01-24-2013. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  20. ^ 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". Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  21. ^ "Chicago Maroon". Retrieved 2011-10-25.
  22. ^ "Collaboration Distance". Retrieved 2011-04-20.

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