Leonard Krop

Lenny was born in Kiev, USSR on January 31st, 1945, immediately following his twin brother Michael. His father Chaim was an accountant and his mother, Nina, was a bookkeeper. The twins had a sister, Anna, six years their senior. The family lived together with their maternal grandmother, Malka, in a modest communal apartment with a courtyard where the children often played.

From a young age, Lenny was interested in mathematics, and once that fire was kindled it never went out. In 1962, at seventeen, Lenny left Kiev and entered the mathematics program at Moscow State University. Five years later, Lenny graduated and moved to Riga, Latvia, to participate in an Algebra Seminar at Latvian State University run by Boris Plotkin, who subsequently became his PhD advisor. This fortuitous journey led him to meet Irina Zak in 1971, who had been a student at the same university and was working as a computer programmer. By 1972, they were married and had their first son, Ilya, the following year. Although he had finished all his graduate work and defended his dissertation in 1974, the Soviet government agency in charge of PhD diplomas did not approve his defense. Their second son, Dan, was born in the spring of 1978. The chance to have his work properly appraised came about with the opening of the border for Soviet Jews and in 1980 the family immigrated to the United States of America. In this new life, Lenny was accepted as a PhD student at the University of Chicago to continue his mathematical work. He finished his PhD on a new algebraic topic in the next three years, working under Israel Herstein, who he continued to respect throughout his life.

The year that he finished his studies, Lenny was offered a position as Assistant Professor at Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas. The family lived there for three years and then moved back to Chicago where Lenny was offered a position as Assistant Professor at DePaul University where he later received tenure and remained for the rest of his professional career.

In Chicago, Lenny was an active participant at the University of Chicago Algebra Seminar and spent countless hours working on research mathematics. His profound and prodigious contributions to representation theory, Lie algebras, and quantum algebra are published in some of the most prestigious journals in the field.

In his leisure time, Lenny loved swimming, boating, traveling, reading non-fiction with an emphasis on history, and intellectual conversations with friends. He had an amazing memory for details, sometimes quoting fragments from works he had read years before.

After his children left Chicago, Lenny and Irina would visit them often, which became more frequent after they each married and began to have children. Lenny was a proud and doting grandfather, indulging his grandchildren at every opportunity. After retiring in 2014 and more years of enjoying the Chicago winter, Lenny and Irina moved to Atlanta in 2022 to spend more time with their grandchildren.

Throughout his life, Lenny was a devoted father and husband, first a scholar in every endeavor, and an ardent defender of truth.

Donations can be made in ​Lenny​ Krop's name to the Jewish National Fund (https://www.jnf.org/). Food contributions can be sent to ​Elliot & Denise's house — 306 Shadowmoor Dr, Decatur, GA, 30030​ — where we will gather after the service on Sunday.