Robert J. Birgeneau
Birgeneau at a Blum Center groundbreaking, April 2009.
14th President of the University of Toronto
In office 2000 – 2004
Preceded by	Robert Prichard
Succeeded by	David Naylor
Born	25 March 1942 (1942-03-25) (age 67) Toronto,Ontario
Spouse(s)	Mary Catherine
Alma mater	University of Toronto Yale University

Robert Joseph Birgeneau (born 25 March 1942) is a Canadian physicist educator and university administrator. He is the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and was the fourteenth president of the University of Toronto from 2000 to 2004.

[edit] Biography

The first from his family to finish high school, Birgeneau graduated from St. Michael's College School in Toronto. He received a B.Sc in mathematics in 1963 from the St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, where he also met his wife Mary Catherine; they have four children.^[1] Birgeneau received his Ph.D in physics from Yale University in 1966.

He spent a year each on the faculties of Yale and the University of Oxford. From 1968 to 1975, he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He then joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor of physics. During his 25 years at MIT, he served as chair of the physics department and then as dean of science.

He left the University of Toronto before the end of his seven-year term, causing a flurry of controversy with his abrupt departure. He was recommended to the Regents by Robert Dynes.

On 14 June 2007, Birgeneau joined the Chancellor of Columbia University in condemning Britain's University and College Union for boycotting Israeli academics and academic institutions and insisting that any boycott include their universities.^[2]

Citing the "likely" threat to California's academic competitiveness if Proposition 8 were passed, Birgeneau urged the UC Berkeley community to vote against a 2008 state ballot measure which would eliminate the right of gays and lesbians to marry.^[3]

In November 2008, former President Robert Dynes' close aide and his UC Associate President Linda Morris Williams, was awarded a controversial pay out and re-hired as an Associate Chancellor at University of California, Berkeley by Chancellor Robert Birgeneau.^[4][5][6] Birgeneau is a fellow Canadian and old friend of Dynes at Bell Labs. This event led President Mark Yudof to make changes to the buy out program.^[7][8]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Robert J. Birgeneau

• Official site of Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau
• Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau's Research Website

v • d • e Presidents of the University of Toronto John Strachan (1827) · John McCaul (1848) · Daniel Wilson (1889) · James Loudon (1892) · Robert Falconer (1907) · Henry John Cody (1932) · Sidney Earle Smith (1945) · Claude Bissell (1958) · John Robert Evans (1972) · James Milton Ham (1978) · David Strangway (1983) · George Connell (1984) · Robert Prichard (1990) · Robert J. Birgeneau (2000) · David Naylor (2005)

v • d • e Chancellors of the University of California, Berkeley Clark Kerr (1952) · Glenn T. Seaborg (1958) · Edward W. Strong (1961) · Martin E. Meyerson (1965) · Roger W. Heyns (1965) · Albert H. Bowker (1971) · Ira Michael Heyman (1980) · Chang-Lin Tien (1990) · Robert M. Berdahl (1997) · Robert J. Birgeneau (2004)