Stephen Jennings

**Stephen Arthur Jennings** (May 11, 1915 – February 2, 1979) was a *distinguished* mathematician whose work laid foundational stones in modular representation theory, especially noted for the 1941 paper that bears his name. Born in Walthamstow, England, Jennings moved with his family to Canada in 1928, where his early academic promise earned him scholarships that followed across the Atlantic. After completing his secondary education in Toronto, he entered University College in 1932 and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1939 under the mentorship of the eminent algebraist Richard Brauer. That same year he married Dorothy Freeda Rintoul, and together they raised two children, Judith and James, while Jennings embarked on a prolific scholarly career.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Jennings held professorial appointments at the University of British Columbia and later at the University of Victoria, where he became the youngest professor ever appointed in Canada and eventually served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Head of the Mathematics Department. His research encompassed the structure of group rings of p‑groups, the behavior of nilpotent rings, and the theory of Lie algebras in characteristic p, producing seminal papers that influenced students such as Rimhak Ree, the discoverer of the Ree groups. Beyond research, Jennings contributed as an editor of *Mathematics Magazine* and even served as acting president of the University of Victoria. His legacy endures in the algebraic community, reflected in the continued citation of his work and the recognition of his contributions to the development of modern algebraic theory.