Rotman was born in Chicago. He did his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis in abelian groups written under the direction of Irving Kaplansky.[3] In 1959 he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he spent the rest of his mathematical career. Rotman retired from UIUC in 2004.[4] His research interests lay in the area of algebra, involving abelian groups, modules, homological algebra, and combinatorics.[2]