Robert Joseph Birgeneau, a Canadian physicist, became the 9th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley on September 22, 2004. He was the 14th President of the University of Toronto from 2000 to 2004. He left the University before the end of his seven-year term, causing a flurry of controversy with his abrupt departure. University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (also known as California, Cal, UCB, UC Berkeley, The University of California, or simply Berkeley) is a public, coeducational university situated east of the San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, California, overlooking the Golden Gate. ... September 22 is the 265th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (266th in leap years). ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Founded in 1827, the University of Toronto (U of T), in Toronto, Ontario, is the largest university in Canada. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The first from his family to finish high school, Birgeneau graduated in 1963 with a BSc in mathematics from the University of Toronto, St. Michael's College, where he also met his wife Mary Catherine; they have four children. Birgeneau received his PhD in physics from Yale University in 1966. On the campus of the University of St. ... Yale University is a private university in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

He spent a year each on the faculties of Yale and Oxford University. 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. The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. MIT is one of the worlds leading research institutions in science and technology, as well as in numerous other fields, including management, economics, linguistics, political science, and philosophy. ...

Birgeneau is world-renowned for his email-checking ability and he plays a killer game of squash.

External links

• Official site of Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau