Sultan Catto
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Karachays | |
|---|---|
 Karachay patriarchs in the 19th century |
|
| Total population | 250,000 (est.) |
| Regions with significant populations | Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey |
| Language | Karachay |
| Religion | Jewish Khazars |
| Related ethnic groups | Other Turkic peoples, Kipchaks |
Sultan Catto, Ph.D., Yale University, Mathematical Physics, has made important contributions to the development of elementary particle physics particularly in the area of dynamical supersymmetry, and in mathematics in the subject areas of spectral theory of automorphic forms and "octonionic projective geometries" (see Octonions and Projective Geometry) with applications to quantum mechanics.
- His academic titles are:
- Professor and Executive Officer, Ph.D. Program , Physics, CUNY Graduate Center
- Professor, Baruch College, CUNY
- Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Henry Krumb School of Mines, Columbia University
- Visiting Professor, The Rockefeller University
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[edit] Awards and Distinguished Service
He was the U.S. winner of the Mathematics Competitions known as the (Math Olympiads).
He and spent eight months as a research fellow at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory.
He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Conference on Differential Geometric Methods in Theoretical Physics.
He is a member of the “International Conferences on Symmetries and Strings.”
He is a member of the “International Wigner Symposia”, together with internationally renowned scientists, Nobel Prize Laureates in physics, and Fields Medalists in mathematics.
He has had short term physics professorships at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, at Academia Sinica, the (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in Beijing, China, at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.
He was a panel member of "Hollywood and Science" at the Hamptons International Film Festival sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
He is a permanent member of the National Council of Science and Technology (Consejo National de Ciencia y Tecnologia - CONCYTEC) in Peru.
He was awarded the “Benjamin W. Lee Prize” by the International School of Subnuclear Physics (Ettore Majorana) in Sicily, Italy, the award having been refereed by the three Nobel Laureates, T. D. Lee, Sheldon Glashow and E. P. Wigner), the awarded having been granted for his work on quark-diquark supersymmetry.
[edit] Research and Work in Progress
Starting with a series of papers published between 1984 and the present, he and his collaborator (Feza Gürsey) exploited internal (dynamical) supersymmetries to construct a combined classification scheme for mesons and baryons. The theoretical models they developed led to the existence of multiquark bound states which were recently grounded in experiments (for example a0 (980) and f0 (975) are of this type). For further details, see Encyclopedia of Supersymmetry.
More recently he is completing a book on "Algebraic Approaches to Particle Theory." The book will cover Relativistic Quark Models, Constraint Superalgebras, Supergroups in Critical dimensions and Lattices Generated by Discrete Jordan Algebras.
Another book, on "Octonionic Structures in Physics," is nearing completion (with Carlos J. Moreno at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate School).
Other topics they are currently researching include the following:
1. Conformal Structures in D=4; Quaternion Analyticity.
2. Euclidean Instantons from Chiral Superfields (N=2), Connections to Statistical Mechanical Models, Yang-Mills Theories.
3. Hyperbolic Extensions of Exceptional Groups and Unified Field Theories.
4. Uniform Treatment of Chiral Symmetry and SU(4) Symmetry of Nuclear Forces.
5. Quaternionic and Octonionic Structures in Physics: Possible Octonionic Basis for Internal Symmetries in Nature.
6. Multiquark states, especially recent results on pentaquarks and associated phenomenology based on split octonionic algebra approach.
[edit] Some Publications: from 1992 to the Present
Proceedings of the XXth
International Conference on Differential Geometric Methods
in Theoretical Physics: June 3-7, 1991, New York City, USA,
eds. Sultan Catto & Alvany Rocha,
(Singapore; River Edge, N.J.:
World Scienrific, 1992),
OCLC: 25813352,
ISBN: 9810208286 & 9810209932
Exceptional Projective Geometries
and Internal Symmetries,
by Sultan Catto
Constraint Superalgebras
and Their Application to Gauge Field Theories
and String Theories,
by Sultan Catto
[edit] Biographical Bit
Prof. Sultan Catto is a direct descendent of the great Italian painter sculptor and architect, Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), Magnus Magister of Florence.
Sultan’s great great grandfather and his family emigrated to Russia during 1840’s, having been invited by the Czar to build cities in imitation of Italian architecture, and to design bridges. And after the conquest and annexation of the North Caucasus from the Ottomans, the family settled there. Sultan's grandfather married a Circassian princess, Gezam Duda.
During the 1850’s Lev Tolstoy, a close friend of Sultan's grandfather lived with the family for three years while writing some of his novels in their home. Thereafter, the oldest son of the family live with Tolstoy family, at Yasnaya Polyana near Moscow.
After the German invasions of World War II, in an attempt to avoid the conflict, members of the family crossed the Russia frontier, and entered the German zone, ended up and settling in Munich. Sultan's father and his younger brothers fought in the Polish resistance. His older uncles were war heros battling the Germans at Stalingrad. After the war Sultan's father and mother met in Germany and married. Sultan's great uncle, with the help of his childhood best friend, Lev Tolstoy’s daughter, Alexandra (she was the president of Tolstoy Foundation based in New York), began publishing a journal called the “North Caucasus”; he was the journal's main editor, and remained so until retirement.
Sultan was born in Germany, and a few years later his mother and father emigrated to Turkey, where the family engaged in large scale farming and coal mining throughout the country for over ten years. The family became citizen of Turkey, and so the Italian family name “Giotto” transliterated into Turkish language, and subsequently into the English language, finally becoming “Catto.”
Due to his outstanding aptitude for mathematics, his family wanted to sent him back to Munich, Germany, where he had been born, to live and and attend high school and college there. But Alexandra Tolstoy insisted that he go to New York City and live with her.
And so he arrived to New York, at the age of 14, and graduated from high school six months later.
As an undergraduate college student he attended the [[New York Tech on a scholarship, winning first place in the Math Olympiads while taking graduate courses at Columbia University. He spent his senior year at the University of Chicago on a CSUI-ANL Fellowship and worked as a research assistant to Murray Peshkin, a group leader at the Argonne National Laboratory, and wrote his first published paper on the "rotational states of even-even nuclei." He later attended Yale University, where he earned his doctorate, under Feza Gursey, who held the Josiah Willard Gibbs distinguished professor chair. Upon completing his Ph.D. he remained at Yale as a Gibbs instructor until his acceptance of a permanent position at the City University of New York, CUNY.
Currently he is the Chairman of the Physics PhD Program at CUNY Graduate School
Professor Catto has other passionate interests, including classical, and international, music, poetry, art, and literature — which may, or may not, impact on his deep sense of beauty in his work in theoretical physics and fundamental mathematics.
[edit] External links
- Prof. Sultan Catto, Baruch College, CUNY
