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Isaac would remind them that in the Urals his eyelashes froze when he went outside.

Isaac was born in 1937 in Kyiv, then part of the Soviet Union. He was the younger of two children. His sister, Fanya, was five, and Isaac was four when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. After Kyiv came under bombardment by the advancing Nazi army, his mother, Revekka, gathered her children and escaped on a neighbor's truck. All of their relatives who remained behind were murdered by the Nazis.

Revekka and the children made their way to the remote Ural region, where they were reunited with Isaac's father, Evsey, an engineer in the Red Army Engineering Corps. The family followed his military postings throughout the war and its aftermath. Whenever his own children complained about the cold winters in Moscow, Isaac would remind them that in the Urals his eyelashes froze when he went outside.

Isaac was an exceptionally gifted mathematician. He graduated at the top of his high school class and was encouraged to apply to university in Moscow. He was accepted to Moscow State University, the premier institution for mathematics in the Soviet Union. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and became one of the pioneering computer scientists in the Soviet Union.

In the late sixties, Isaac was visiting his cousin who lived in Kiev. Isaac was relaxing on the couch when his cousin’s wife’s sister came into the room. The woman’s name was Nelya. She volunteered to show him the Kiev sights. Isaac, the hyper-rational mathematician, proposed to the beautiful young woman after a few days of meeting her. They were married for 58 years.

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Isaac, the hyper-rational mathematician, proposed to the beautiful young woman after a few days of meeting her.

Isaac and Nelya believed that the opportunities available to their family were limited by the deeply entrenched antisemitism of the Soviet Union. In 1979, they applied to emigrate with their two children, ten-year-old David and three-year-old Dina. The Soviet authorities refused their request to leave, and they became refuseniks. Isaac became an active participant in the refusenik movement, taking part in dissident activities that challenged the Soviet authorities. He was threatened repeatedly but never backed down.

After nine years of struggle, the Mayzlin family finally arrived in the United States in 1988. Isaac worked as a software engineer in the field of artificial intelligence for companies in Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Boston area, and later California. After retiring from the software industry at age 65, he returned to one of his lifelong passions by teaching mathematics at Suffolk University in Boston.

Isaac was a devoted son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, and friend. Nothing mattered more to him than his family. He took extraordinary risks to give his children the opportunity to live as proud Jews in a free country. We will remember his brilliance, his warmth, his courage, and his wonderful sense of humor. He will be deeply missed.