Ron Irving is a mathematics professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was born in suburban New York City, studied mathematics and philosophy at Harvard, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics at MIT. Following a postdoctoral position at Brandeis and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship year at the University of Chicago and UC San Diego, Irving came to Seattle. He has been a visiting faculty member at UCSD and Aarhus and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research interests have ranged over several areas of algebra, including ring theory and the representation theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras.

When Irving began teaching the department's senior algebra course for majors planning on secondary teaching careers, he developed an interest in the preparation of pre-service and in-service teachers. His work with this audience led to receipt of the university's Distinguished Teaching Award and to his book Integers, Polynomials, and Rings.

Irving spent seven years in academic administration, serving as department chair for a year, divisional dean of natural sciences for four, and interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for two. During this time, he established the Summer Institute for Mathematics at UW, a six-week residential program that brings talented high school students in the Pacific Northwest to the university to share in the excitement of doing mathematics. He continues to serve as the program's executive director.