Jim Simons was 30 when he was made chair of the Stony Brook math department. Are there contemporary examples of similarly young US department chairs?
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Perhaps. However, being Chair is not particularly substantive. Not that it isn't an important role, just that it is much less about shaping intellectual direction and much more about being effective at institutional bureaucracy/negotiation (and some boring admin work).
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Not in Jim's case! But, yes, maybe so in general / today...
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My impression is that in most departments the administration plays a small or no role in choosing the chair. It's the faculty.
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It's also often... not a sought-after role, to put it mildly. I know of small departments where it's done by rule (typically, a rotating schedule of all full profs), as otherwise they have trouble filling it.
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In Jim's case wasn't it also that Stony Brook math department was desperate? IIRC that's how he describes it ...
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The new biography outlines this event clearly: it was a case of desperate supply (Simmons had been fired by DoD for his anti Vietnam war letter + had 3 young kids + didn’t want to teach math) meeting desperate demand (Stony Brook hadn’t been able to find a dept chair for years)
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