Martin Meyerson

Abstract

Martin Meyerson’s career demonstrates the range and variety of achievement that is possible in the world of planning. Beginning as a practitioner in the Chicago Housing Authority, he went on to become one of the most important planning theorists and academics of the 1950s. However, the major part of his career was devoted to institution building as a university president. At the University of California, Berkeley, during the tumultuous early 1960s, he steered the university through a great crisis but did not receive recognition. At the State University of New York, in the 1970s, he took on the task of a huge expansion, which resulted in great strain and conflict. However, his major achievement was as president of the University of Pennsylvania, which was rejuvenated academically, financially, and physically under his leadership.