Mathematician may become U-Chi president

A presidential search committee is recommending Robert Zimmer, provost of Brown University, become the 13th President of the University of Chicago.

If that recommendation is approved during a special Friday meeting of the school's board of trustees, Zimmer will assume the office July 1, succeeding Don Michael Randel, who has served as the university's president since 2000. Randel will become president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation this summer.

Zimmer is a mathematician who was a faculty member at the University of Chicago for more than two decades before leaving in 2002 to become Brown's provost.

In addition to his teaching and research work in the mathematical fields of geometry, group theory and analysis, Zimmer served as the University of Chicago's mathematics department chairman, deputy provost, and finally, vice president for research at the Argonne National Laboratory.

Zimmer is a specialist in geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International