In mathematics, more specifically ring theory, the Jacobson radical of a ring R is the ideal consisting of those elements in R that annihilate all simple right R-modules. It happens that substituting "left" in place of "right" in the definition yields the same ideal, and so the notion is left–right symmetric. The Jacobson radical of a ring is frequently denoted by J(R) or rad(R); the former notation will be preferred in this article, because it avoids confusion with other radicals of a ring. The Jacobson radical is named after Nathan Jacobson, who was the first to study it for arbitrary rings in Jacobson 1945.
The Jacobson radical of a ring has numerous internal characterizations, including a few definitions that successfully extend the notion to non-unital rings. The radical of a module extends the definition of the Jacobson radical to include modules. The Jacobson radical plays a prominent role in many ring- and module-theoretic results, such as Nakayama's lemma.