Martin Isaacs

Irving Martin Isaacs (1940 – 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]}

Isaacs completed his PhD from Harvard University in 1964 under Richard Brauer,^{[5] [6]} with a thesis titled Finite ${\displaystyle p}${\displaystyle p}-solvable linear groups.^[7] From at least 1969 until 2011, he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In May 2011, he retired and became a professor emeritus.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} According to the Mathematics Genealogy Project, he supervised 29 doctoral students over his career.^[6]

In retirement, he lived in Berkeley, California and was an occasional participant on MathOverflow.^[4]

Isaacs is most famous for formulating the Isaacs–Navarro conjecture along with Gabriel Navarro, a widely cited generalization of the McKay conjecture.^{[8] [9]}

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.^{[10] [11]}

Isaacs is also the author of the book Algebra: A Graduate Course (first published in 1994; republished in 2009),^[12] which received highly positive reviews.^[13] Additionally, he is the author of Finite Group Theory (published in 2008).^{[14] [15] [16]}

In 2009, a conference was held at the Universitat de Valencia in Spain to honor his contributions.^[17]

Isaacs was also a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[18]

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.

Isaacs died in February 2025.^[19]

• 20th-century American mathematicians
• 21st-century American mathematicians
• 2025 deaths
• Group theorists
• Harvard University alumni
• University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
• Writers from Wisconsin
• Fellows of the American Mathematical Society

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Year of birth missing