I. Martin Isaacs

Irving Martin Isaacs (April 14, 1940 – February 17, 2025) was an American group theorist and representation theorist. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison until his retirement.^[1][2][3][4]

I. Martin Isaacs
Born	(1940-04-14)April 14, 1940
Died	February 17, 2025(2025-02-17) (aged 84)
Scientific career
Fields	Group theory, mathematics
Institutions	University of Chicago University of Wisconsin–Madison

Biography

Isaacs was born in the Bronx, in New York City, on April 14, 1940.^[5][6] He received a BS from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1960.^[6]

Isaacs went on to Harvard University for graduate study. He received a masters degree in 1961,^[6] and completed his PhD in 1964. His thesis was advised by Richard Brauer,^[7] and was titled Finite ${\displaystyle p}$-solvable linear groups.^[8] After a few years at the University of Chicago as an instructor and visiting assistant professor, Isaacs moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969.^[6] He was hired as an associate professor, and promoted to full professor in 1971.^[6] According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, he supervised 29 doctoral students over his career.^[7]

In 2011, Isaacs retired and became a professor emeritus.^[1][2][3][4] In retirement, he lived in Berkeley, California and was an occasional participant on MathOverflow.^[4] Near the end of his life, he endowed a prize awarded for "Excellence in Mathematical Writing," first awarded in 2025.^[5][9]

Research

Isaacs is most famous for formulating the Isaacs–Navarro conjecture along with Gabriel Navarro, a widely cited generalization of the McKay conjecture.^[10][11]

Books

Isaacs is famous as the author of Character Theory of Finite Groups (first published in 1976), one of the most well-known graduate student-level introductory books in character theory and representation theory of finite groups.^[12][13]

Isaacs is also the author of the book Algebra: A Graduate Course (first published in 1994; republished in 2009),^[14] which received highly positive reviews.^[15] Additionally, he is the author of Finite Group Theory (published in 2008).^[16][17][18]

Honors

In 2009, a conference was held at the Universitat de Valencia in Spain to honor his contributions.^[19] Following the conference, a festschrift was published by the American Mathematical Society.^[20]

Isaacs was also a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[21]

Isaacs was a Pólya lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America. He received the Benjamin Smith Reynolds award for teaching engineering students at the University of Wisconsin and a UW Madison campus teaching award. He was also the recipient of a Sloan Foundation research award.

Personal life

Isaacs was seriously injured in an automobile accident in France in 1964, shortly after receiving his PhD. The accident left him scarred and disabled.^[5]

He died of kidney failure on February 17, 2025.^[5]