Robert Birgeneau
Chancellor
University of California at Berkeley

Robert Birgeneau received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Toronto in 1963 and his Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University in 1966. He served on the faculty of Yale and Oxford University, and was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1968 to 1975. He joined the physics faculty at MIT in 1975, named Chair of the Physics Department in 1988, and Dean of Science in 1991. In 2000, he became the 14th president of the University of Toronto, until accepting the position of Chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. At Berkeley, Birgeneau holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Physics in addition to serving as chancellor.

Birgeneau's research is primarily concerned with the phases and phase transition behavior of novel states of matter. These include one and two dimensional quantum magnets, liquid crystals, physisorbed and chemisorbed surface monolayers, graphite intercalates, highly disordered magnets and lamellar CuO2 superconductors. He uses mainly neutron and x-ray scattering techniques to probe these systems.

He is a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, has received many awards for teaching and research, and is one of the most cited physicists in the world for his work on the fundamental properties of materials.