Irving Kaplansky (March 22, 1917 – June 25, 2006) was a mathematician, college professor, author, and amateur musician.

[2] Kaplansky or "Kap" as his friends and colleagues called him was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Polish-Jewish immigrants;[3][4] his father worked as a tailor, and his mother ran a grocery and, eventually, a chain of bakeries.

"[9] After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941[1] as Saunders Mac Lane's first student, he remained at Harvard as a Benjamin Peirce Instructor, and in 1944 moved with Mac Lane to Columbia University for one year to collaborate on work surrounding World War II[10] working on "miscellaneous studies in mathematics applied to warfare analysis with emphasis upon aerial gunnery, studies of fire control equipment, and rocketry and toss bombing"[11] with the Applied Mathematics Panel.

After moving to the University of Chicago, he stopped playing for two decades, but then returned to music as an accompanist for student-run Gilbert and Sullivan productions and as a calliope player in football game parades.

[2] Kaplansky was the doctoral supervisor of 55 students including notable mathematicians Hyman Bass, Susanna S. Epp, Günter Lumer, Eben Matlis, Donald Ornstein, Ed Posner, Alex F. T. W. Rosenberg, Judith D. Sally, and Harold Widom.