Robert Jeffrey Zimmer (born November 5, 1947) is an American
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and academic administrator. From 2006 until 2021, he served as the 13th
president
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
of the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
and as the Chair of the Board for
Argonne National Lab
Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the larg ...
,
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...
, and the
Marine Biological Laboratory
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent ...
. He then served as chancellor of the University of Chicago until July 2022.
As a mathematician, Zimmer specializes in
geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ...
, particularly
ergodic theory,
Lie groups
In mathematics, a Lie group (pronounced ) is a group that is also a differentiable manifold. A manifold is a space that locally resembles Euclidean space, whereas groups define the abstract concept of a binary operation along with the additi ...
, and
differential geometry.
Education and work experience
Zimmer graduated from New York's
Stuyvesant High School in 1964.
He matriculated to
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, ...
as an undergraduate, earning his
B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
,
summa cum laude, in 1968.
[ He conducted his mathematics graduate study at ]Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, receiving his master's degree in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1975 under the supervision of George Mackey
George Whitelaw Mackey (February 1, 1916 – March 15, 2006) was an American mathematician known for his contributions to quantum logic, representation theory, and noncommutative geometry.
Career
Mackey earned his bachelor of arts at Rice Unive ...
.
Zimmer taught at the United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy (US Naval Academy, USNA, or Navy) is a federal service academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It was established on 10 October 1845 during the tenure of George Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy. The Naval Academy ...
from 1975 to 1977, and moved to the mathematics department of the University of Chicago in 1977. From 1981 to 1983, Zimmer was a professor in the mathematics department of University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
. He was on the mathematics faculty and held several administrative positions at the University of Chicago, including Chairman of th
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.
]
University of Chicago presidency
As president, Zimmer pushed for major academic initiatives at Chicago, including increased financial aid for students in the undergraduate College
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offerin ...
and the elimination of loans from financial aid packages; increased funding for doctoral students, particularly in humanities and social sciences; the University of Chicago's first engineering program, which began as the Institute for Molecular Engineering and is now the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering; new programs and facilities in the arts; and the establishment of the Becker-Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society, and the Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. During Zimmer's presidency, the University of Chicago expanded its presence locally with the launch of the Urban Education Institute and globally with the launch of the Center in Beijing, the Center in Delhi, and the Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex , The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong.
Under Zimmer's administration applications to the undergraduate College increased from under 10,000 in 2006 to over 32,000 in 2018. 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. 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.
During Zimmer's tenure the University of Chicago received six gifts of $100 million or more (totaling 8.5M): an anonymous $100 million donation to fund the undergraduate Odyssey scholarship program; a $300 million donation to the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth or Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 N ...
; 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
The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, also referred to as "Harris Public Policy," is the public policy school of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located on the University's main campus in H ...
; 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. The Chicago Principles were adopted by more than 65 colleges and universities. As Zimmer noted in an address to the Chicago Humanities Festival
The Chicago Humanities Festival is a non-profit organization which hosts an annual series of lectures, concerts, and films in Chicago. There are two seasons each year, including a spring festival from April through May, and a longer fall 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." Zimmer also spoke on the importance of these ideas in the keynote address at the University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...
's Academic Freedom in the Digital Age conference.
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
A trauma trigger is a psychological stimulus that prompts involuntary recall of a previous traumatic experience. The stimulus itself need not be frightening or traumatic and may be only indirectly or superficially reminiscent of an earlier trauma ...
, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial
Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...
, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
An Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
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.
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. Zimmer originally had planned to serve through 2022, but acknowledged that brain surgery he had undergone in May 2020 had accelerated his transition. On July 7, 2022, he stepped down from his role as chancellor to focus on his health.
Mathematical work
Zimmer's work centers on group actions on manifolds and more general spaces, with applications to topology
In mathematics, topology (from the Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a geometric object that are preserved under continuous deformations, such as stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending; that is, without closing ...
and geometry. Much of his work is in the area now known as the "Zimmer Program" which aims to understand the actions of semisimple
In mathematics, semi-simplicity is a widespread concept in disciplines such as linear algebra, abstract algebra, representation theory, category theory, and algebraic geometry. A semi-simple object is one that can be decomposed into a sum of ''sim ...
Lie groups and their discrete subgroups on differentiable manifolds.
Crucial to this program is "Zimmer's cocycle superrigidity theorem", a generalization of Grigory Margulis
Grigory Aleksandrovich Margulis (russian: Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Маргу́лис, first name often given as Gregory, Grigori or Gregori; born February 24, 1946) is a Russian-American mathematician known for his work on ...
's superrigidity theorem. Like Margulis's work, which greatly influenced Zimmer, it uses ergodic theory as a central technique in the case of invariant measure In mathematics, an invariant measure is a measure that is preserved by some function. The function may be a geometric transformation. For examples, circular angle is invariant under rotation, hyperbolic angle is invariant under squeeze mapping, ...
s. It led to many results within the Zimmer Program, although many of the main conjectures remain open.[ 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.][
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
Alexander Lubotzky ( he, אלכסנדר לובוצקי; born 28 June 1956) is an Israeli mathematician and former politician who is currently a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an adjunct professor at Yale University. He served ...
applied some of these ideas to arithmetic results on fundamental groups of manifolds. 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. His collaboration with Amos Nevo concerned actions with stationary measure and provided certain basic structure theorems for such actions of higher rank semisimple groups. Zimmer's earlier work provided a proof of a conjecture of Alain Connes
Alain Connes (; born 1 April 1947) is a French mathematician, and a theoretical physicist, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He is a professor at the , , Ohio State University and Vand ...
on orbit equivalence of actions of semisimple groups, and introduced the basic notion of amenable group
In mathematics, an amenable group is a locally compact topological group ''G'' carrying a kind of averaging operation on bounded functions that is invariant under translation by group elements. The original definition, in terms of a finitely addit ...
action.
Personal life
He 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 have three grown sons.[ In October 2011, he married University of Chicago Classics professor Shadi Bartsch.
]
Honors
* Zimmer is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...
.
* Zimmer received an honorary Doctorate from Tsinghua University
Tsinghua University (; abbr. THU) is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
The university is a member of the C9 League, Double First Class University Plan, Projec ...
(April 2011) and Colby College
Colby College is a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine. It was founded in 1813 as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, then renamed Waterville College after the city where it resides. The donations of Christian philant ...
(September 2014).
* In 2012 Zimmer became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
.
* In 2017 Zimmer received the 13th annual Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) is a conservative non-profit organization whose stated mission is to "support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure t ...
.
* In 2021 Zimmer received an honorary degree from his alma mater Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, ...
.
See also
*Zimmer's conjecture
Zimmer's conjecture is a statement in mathematics "which has to do with the circumstances under which geometric spaces exhibit certain kinds of symmetries." It was named after the mathematician Robert Zimmer. The conjecture states that there can ...
*Paul Alivisatos
Armand Paul Alivisatos (born November 12, 1959) is an American chemist who serves as the 14th president of the University of Chicago. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use i ...
References
External links
Office of the President of the University of Chicago
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmer, Robert
Presidents of the University of Chicago
1947 births
Living people
Stuyvesant High School alumni
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
Brandeis University alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Fellows of the American Mathematical Society
Mathematicians from New York (state)