Sheldon Katz

Sheldon H. Katz (19 December 1956, Brooklyn) is an American mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry and its applications to string theory.
Background and Career.
In 1973 Katz won first prize in the U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad. He received in 1976 his bachelor's degree from MIT and in 1980 his Ph.D. from Princeton University under Robert C. Gunning with thesis "Deformations of Linear Systems, Divisors and Weierstrass Points on Curves". At the University of Utah, he was an instructor from 1980 to 1984. At the University of Oklahoma he was an assistant professor from 1984 to 1987. At Oklahoma State University, he became in 1987 an assistant professor, in 1989 an associate professor, in 1994 a full professor, in 1997 "Southwestern Bell Professor", and in 1999 "Regents Professor." Since 2001 he has been a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was chair of the department in 2006–2011.
For the academic year 1982/83 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was a visiting professor at the Mittag-Leffler Institute (1997), at Duke University (1991/92) and at the University of Bayreuth (1989).
His research on algebraic geometry and its applications to string theory (including mirror symmetry) and supersymmetry has been published in prestigious journals in mathematics and physics.
In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.