Randolph Wilson ("Bill") Bromery[1] (January 18, 1926 – February 26, 2013) was an American educator and geologist, and a former Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1971–79).
[3] He then enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and was assigned to the Tuskegee Airmen, flying missions in Italy during World War II.
[3] After his 1945 discharge from the Army, Bromery studied at Howard University, working full-time at the U.S. Geological Survey as an airborne exploration geophysicist—the first black professional geophysicist with the USGS.
[6] His doctoral thesis was entitled Geological Interpretation of Aeromagnetic and Gravity Surveys of the Northeastern End of the Baltimore-Washington Anticlinorium, Harford, Baltimore, and Part of Carroll County, Maryland.
Bromery joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Geology Department in 1969, earning tenure quickly, and becoming Chancellor in 1971.
He was only the second African American to lead a predominantly (historically) white campus, after Clifton R. Wharton Jr. at Michigan State University, and the first in the Northeast.
Bromery, a saxophonist himself, recruited several well-known jazz figures to the faculty, including Max Roach, Archie Shepp, and Fred Tillis.
He was president of the Geological Society of America in 1989, and served on the board of directors of numerous large corporations, including Exxon and John Hancock Insurance.