Martin Meyerson, whose long academic career included stints as the chief executive of three major research universities, died of prostate cancer on Saturday at a hospital in Philadelphia. He was 84.

Mr. Meyerson served as acting chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1965, during a turbulent period of student protests on that campus. He was president of the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1966 to 1970, and president of the University of Pennsylvania from 1970 to 1981. He remained at Penn after leaving the presidency, serving as a university professor of public-policy analysis and city and regional planning, among other roles.

He was the first Jewish head of a major research university, and he and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College were the first Jewish presidents in the Ivy League. A reporter once called Mr. Meyerson “the Jackie Robinson of Jewish academia.”

Before he became a university president, he was one of the leaders in the development of the field of city planning. Among his contributions were to integrate social-science research and an understanding of economic markets into urban planning. The sociologist Herbert Gans said Mr. Meyerson “completely changed the field of urban planning.”

Penn’s current president, Amy Gutmann, described Mr. Meyerson in a written statement today as “an exemplary citizen of this university for more than five decades.” Penn plans to hold a memorial service for Mr. Meyerson in the fall. —Charles Huckabee