Robert Fuller

Robert Works Fuller, a physicist, academic leader, author, global humanitarian, and founding voice of the modern dignity movement, died on July 15, 2025 in Berkeley, California. He was born October 26, 1936, in Summit, New Jersey. Bob spent a lifetime integrating expertise in physics, education, diplomacy, social justice, and the arts to challenge conventional wisdom and bring about social and political change. Bob entered Oberlin College at age 15 on a Ford fellowship and graduate school at Princeton University at age 18, in physics. After additional study at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the University of Chicago, he returned to Princeton to work with the renowned theoretical physicist John Wheeler, coauthoring with him a foundational paper on wormholes: Causality and Multiply Connected Space-Time. This paper pushed physicists to consider quantum topology, a key concept in quantum gravity research today. Bob received his Ph.D. in physics in 1961. Along with John Wheeler, Bob worked with Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi; friend Judd Fermi, mathematician and son of physicist Enrico Fermi; and Peter Putnam. Peter and Bob published a paper on Putnam’s Darwinian model of brain function. In the early 60’s, Bob taught physics and mathematics at Columbia University, New York, as well as at Barnard and Wesleyan. During this time, he co-authored (with Fred Byron) the book Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics. It’s still in print and used today. In 1967, Bob’s attention was drawn towards the Civil Rights movement and educational reform. He developed a course for inner city high school dropouts in Seattle to show them that they could indeed learn and be successful students. That project led to a new career in educational reform as the Dean of Faculty at Trinity College. While dean, Bob traveled to India and briefed Prime Minister Indira Ghandi regarding atomic energy and her Institutes of Technology. He also worked with Alaskan Inuits in the Bering Straits. In 1970, at age 33, Bob returned to become president of Oberlin College. At Oberlin, Fuller spearheaded sweeping reforms: inaugurating a Commission on the Status of Women, tripling the enrollment of minority students, expanding co-ed dormitories, and hiring African-American head coaches, including Tommie Smith, the Olympic gold-medal sprinter. He supported the students’ anti-war demonstrations and feminist and gay liberation movements. Under his leadership, Oberlin College also reformed its curriculum, eliminated distribution requirements, and incorporated student representation into the decision-making structure of the college. It was a turbulent time in America and Bob’s leadership at Oberlin made national news, from Life Magazine and The Wall Street Journal, to an ABC Sports special with Howard Cosell. While these reforms were in the spirit of these times, they were sometimes controversial, and he resigned in 1974. During the 1970’s, Bob traveled to Vietnam to get a first-hand view of the conflict. He also visited India and after witnessing the famine in Calcutta, he mounted a campaign to address world hunger, partnering with singer John Denver in that effort. In 1977, the two met with President Carter and Vice-President Mondale at the White House. That meeting in the Oval Office led to the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger. For the next decade, it was the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union that consumed Bob’s energy. Knowing the science behind the making of nuclear weapons, he became active as a writer, citizen diplomat, and public speaker about arms control. In 1978, Bob and his family took the trans-Siberian Railway from Leningrad across eleven time zones to the Sea of Japan. In the 1980s, he took the “trans-Sib” in the reverse direction, and made frequent trips to the USSR as Chairman of Internews, an organization devoted to fostering independent media in emerging democracies. Internews created so-called “spacebridges,” linking American and Soviet audiences via two-way live television that explored a range of political issues with the goal of de-stereotyping the Cold War antagonists to each other. As a result of this work, Fuller met Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev and traveled to Afghanistan with Yevgeny Primakov, who would later serve as Yeltsin’s prime minister. During this time, Fuller also worked on other projects dealing with conflict resolution and economic development, traveling to Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, South Africa, and throughout South Asia and South America. In 1992, Bob worked in Somalia to help bring images of the devastating famine there to the attention of the United Nations. With the collapse of the USSR, Bob’s work as citizen diplomat came to a close and he began reflecting on his career. He had observed a lot of man-made suffering: the degradation of poverty and food insecurity, educational injustices, harassment in the workplace, corporate fraud and abuse, and the horrors of famine and war. It became clear to Bob that reducing “man’s inhumanity to man” would require a strategy that deals with how “somebodies” degrade and exploit “nobodies.” His years of crossing social hierarchies, from esteemed academic to grassroots activist, led him to coin the term “rankism:” the systemic abuse of power inherent in social ranking, and its antidote: “Dignity for All.” He authored several influential works, including Somebodies and Nobodies (2003), All Rise (2006), and Dignity for All (2008), and became a leading voice in a global Dignity Movement that reached universities, corporate boardrooms, and national policymakers. Bob has been featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Oprah Magazine, NPR, C-Span, the BBC, and in TED talks, and his books have been translated and published in China, India, Korea, and Bangladesh. His outreach earned international recognition, including serving as keynote speaker at a 2011 “Dignity for All” conference hosted by the president of Bangladesh. In his 80’s, Bob turned his attention to art and music. He loved playing Schubert on the piano and experimenting with color and shapes in his paintings at his Berkeley art studio. Days before Bob’s death, his written short story was published in the Princeton Alumni Magazine, integrating concepts from physics to social justice in an imaginary conversation through wormholes with John Wheeler. Link: https://paw.princeton.edu/article/finding-famed-physicist-john-wheeler . Bob, a sprinter, was motivated by the "Run Your Age" concept, in which runners attempt to run the quarter mile equal to their age in years. Days past his 64th birthday, he broke 63 seconds for the quarter mile and was inducted into the “Quarter-Milers Club,” a club which he had proposed to the magazine Runner’s World (later described in the February 2001 issue). Robert Fuller was married to Ann Fuller and later to Alia Johnson. He is survived by four children (Karen, Ben, Noah, and Adam), four grandchildren (Azamat, Arden, Thomas and Charlie), and his beloved wife of 35 years, Claire Sheridan. Bob also had well-honed aptitude for deeply listening to his many friends of all ages, and consequently many of them considered him to be their “best friend” in life. Bob’s legacy lies not only in his scientific and institutional achievements but in his enduring vision of a more equitable and dignified world, one where power respects all persons. For more information on Bob’s work, please refer to his website: www.RobertWorksFuller.com