Joseph J. Rotman (May 26, 1934 – October 16, 2016^[1]) was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign^[2] and also a published author of 10 textbooks.

Rotman was born in Chicago. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis in abelian groups written under the direction of Irving Kaplansky.^[3] In 1959 he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he spent the rest of his mathematical career. Rotman retired from UIUC in 2004.^[4] His research interests lay in the area of algebra, involving abelian groups, modules, homological algebra, and combinatorics.^[5]

Rotman was the Managing Editor of the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society in 1972–1973.^[4] In 1985 he was the Annual Visiting Lecturer of the South African Mathematical Society.^[6]

A partial list of Rotman's publications includes:

• An Introduction to Homological Algebra (1979), Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 85, Academic Press; ISBN 0-12-599250-5^[7]
• An Introduction to Algebraic Topology (1988), Springer-Verlag; ISBN 0-387-96678-1
• An Introduction to the Theory of Groups (1995), Springer-Verlag; ISBN 0-387-94285-8
• A First Course in Abstract Algebra (2000), Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-011584-3
• Advanced Modern Algebra (2002), Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-087868-5
• Journey into Mathematics: an introduction to proofs (2006), Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-45306-5