Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Ismail-Zadeh attended the Bulbul specialized secondary music school of the Baku Academy of Music and Baku High School #134 (specialized in mathematics) between 1967 and 1978. He graduated from the Baku State University and the Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1983 before being awarded Ph.D. degree in 1990 and D.Sc. (Habilitation) in 1997 from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia. Ismail-Zadeh has been affiliated to the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geology and Geophysics (1983-1986, 1990–1992). He has been chief scientist, research professor and scientific leader of research group "Computational Geodynamics and Geohazard Modeling" of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Moscow (1992–2022).
