  Answering a question of I. M. Isaacs, we show that the largest degree of
irreducible complex representations of any finite non-abelian simple group can
be bounded in terms of the smaller degrees. We also study the asymptotic
behavior of this largest degree for finite groups of Lie type. Moreover, we
show that for groups of Lie type, the Steinberg character has largest degree
among all unipotent characters.
