Isadore Manuel Singer is an Institute Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was born on May 3, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. Singer received the B.S. from the University of Michigan, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago in 1948 & 1950. In 1950 Singer began his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, where he taught for the next two years. Although he accepted short-term appointments at the University of California, Los Angeles, Columbia University in New York City, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Singer returned to MIT in 1954 and made it his home until 1977, when he left for the University of California, Berkeley. In 1987 he returned once more to MIT, where he finished his career. Among his many honours, Singer was awarded the Bocher Prize (1969) and the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2000), both given by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Singer also served as vice president of the AMS (1970–72). In 1983, he received the National Medal Of Science.