James Lepowsky (born July 5, 1944) is a professor of mathematics at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 where his advisors were Bertram Kostant and Sigurdur Helgason.
Lepowsky graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1961,[1] 16 years after Kostant.
In 1988, in a joint work with Igor Frenkel and Arne Meurman, he constructed the monster vertex algebra (also known as the Moonshine module).
His PhD students include Stefano Capparelli, Yi-Zhi Huang, Haisheng Li, Arne Meurman, and Antun Milas.