Herstein was born in
Lublin,
Poland, in 1923. His family emigrated to
Winnipeg in 1926, and he grew up in a harsh and underprivileged environment where, according to him, "you either became a gangster or a college professor." During his school years he played football, ice hockey, golf, tennis, and
pool. He also worked as a
steeplejack and as a
barker at a fair. He received his B.S. degree from the
University of Manitoba and his M.A. from the
University of Toronto. He received his
Ph.D. from
Indiana University Bloomington in 1948. His advisor was
Max Zorn. He held positions at the
University of Kansas,
Ohio State University,
University of Pennsylvania, and
Cornell University before permanently settling at the University of Chicago in 1962. He was a
Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1960–1961. He is known for his lucid style of writing, as exemplified by his
Topics in Algebra, an undergraduate introduction to
abstract algebra that was first published in 1964, with a second edition in 1975. A more advanced text is his
Noncommutative Rings in the
Carus Mathematical Monographs series. His primary interest was in
noncommutative ring theory, but he also wrote papers on
finite groups,
linear algebra, and
mathematical economics. He had 30 Ph.D. students, traveled and lectured widely, and spoke Italian, Hebrew, Polish, and Portuguese. He died from cancer in
Chicago,
Illinois, in 1988. His doctoral students include
Miriam Cohen,
Wallace S. Martindale,
Susan Montgomery,
Karen Parshall and
Claudio Procesi. ==Selected publications==