Martin Meyerson

Martin Meyerson
Martin Meyerson at the University at Buffalo (1967)
10th President of the University at Buffalo
In office 1966–1969
Preceded by	Clifford C. Furnas
Succeeded by	Robert L. Ketter
Personal details
Born	14 November 1922 Brooklyn, New York
Died	2 June 2007 (age 84) Philadelphia, PA
Occupation	President of the University of Pennsylvania

Martin Meyerson (14 November 1922 – 2 June 2007) was a United States city planner and academic leader best known as the President of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) between 1970 and 1981.

Meyerson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1922 and graduated from Columbia University. He then obtained his MA in city planning from Harvard University, and began working in the Philadelphia City Planning Commission. In 1948, he became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

In 1952 Meyerson came to University of Pennsylvania as associate professor of city and regional planning (in the Graduate School of Fine Arts). In 1957 he moved to Harvard as a full professor (the "Williams Professor"). From 1963 to 1966 he served as dean of the College of Environmental Design at UCB; he was the acting chancellor in 1965 during the student unrest there, and is credited with helping to defuse the tension that had built up on that campus.

From 1966 to 1970 Meyerson was professor of public policy and president of the State University of New York at Buffalo. At the University at Buffalo, he broke ground and laid plans for the Amherst Campus, and presided over a period when students were active in demonstrating for rights. In 1970, he returned to Penn as its president. He remained at that post until 1981. During his tenure, he consolidated several colleges and programs into the school of arts and sciences and introduced its first affirmative action and equal opportunity programs for minorities and women.

Meyerson retired from the university presidency in January 1981, but remained active at Penn as University Professor of Public Policy Analysis and City and Regional Planning and as chair of the University of Pennsylvania Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania Press (1984-1997; then chair emeritus), the Institute for Research on Higher Education, and the Monell Chemical Senses Center. He co-chaired Penn’s 250th anniversary celebration (1990). He served on the boards of the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences, the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies, and the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response. He chaired the University’s Fels Center of Government program until February 1996. In 1993 he and his wife were elected as co-presidents of the Friends of the Library, in which capacity they served on the Library’s Board of Overseers.