Sultan Catto
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Sultan Catto is an American physicist. He is currently Professor of Physics and Executive Officer of the PhD program at the the City University of New York, The Graduate Center.
Catto 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
- Professor, Center for Theoretical Physics, Rockefeller University
- Associate Research Scientist, Henry Krumb School of Mines, Columbia University
[edit] Awards and distinguished service
Catto was the U.S. winner of the Mathematics Competitions known as the (Math Olympiads).
He was a Research Fellow at University of Chicago, CSUI-ANL Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and Research Fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
He was the recipient of the prestigious Josiah Willard Gibbs fellowship at Yale University.
He is a member of the Silliman College at Yale University.
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 Advisory Board of the International Conferences on Symmetries and Strings.
He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the International Wigner Symposium, together with internationally renowned scientists, Nobel Laureates in physics, and Fields Medalists in mathematics.
He is an editor of the Journal of Generalized Lie Theory and Applications.
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, at Ecole Normale Superiore in Paris, 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. [1]
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 award having been granted for his work on quark-diquark supersymmetry.
He was an All-American soccer star. He played as a professional for Austria. His cousin Kazbek Tambi who trained with him was Columbia University's captain, captain of the US Olympic soccer team and played for Cosmos with great Pelé.
He was a one of the main dancers of Taimazov Dance Ensemble. He performed cossack dances, giving hundreds of performances all over US, Europe and Asia.
[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 Concise 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 Recent Publications:
Professor Catto has published more than a hundred scientific articles in professional mathematics and physics journals and proceedings of international conferences. He is widely considered to be one of world's leading authorities on higher dimensional algebraic structures (octonions) and their wide ranging applications to many different areas of physics. He is also a frequent contributor to scientific encyclopedias.
- V.P. Akulov, Sultan Catto and A. Pashnev, N=2 SuperTime Dependent Oscillator and spontaneous Breaking of Supersymmetry [2]
- Sultan Catto, Exceptional Projective Geometries and Internal Symmetries [3]
- Sultan Catto, Effective Hadronic Lagrangians Based on QCD: Potential Models and Skyrmions [4]
- V.P. Akulov, Sultan Catto, Oktay Cebecioglu and A. Pashnev, On the Time Dependent Oscillator and the Nonlinear Realizations of the Virasoro Group; Physics Letters B, 575, 137 (2003) [5]
- Sultan Catto, Jonathan Huntley, Nam Jong Moh, and David Tepper, Weyl's Law with Error Estimate [6]
- Sultan Catto, Algebraic Realization of Quark-Diquark Supersymmetry [7]
- Sultan Catto, Symmetries and Mass Predictions of the Supersymmetric Quark Model [8]
- Sultan Catto, Jonathan Huntley, Jay Jorgenson and David Tepper, On an Analog of Selberg's Eigenvalue Conjecture for SL\_3(Z) [9]
- Sultan Catto, Constraint Superalgebras and Their Application to Gauge Field Theories and String Theories [10]
- Sultan Catto, Chiral Symmetry and Vertex Symmetry in the Extended Moeller-Rosenfeld Model [11]
- Sultan Catto, Self-Dual Fields and Quaternion Analyticity [12]
Book/Monogram (in two volumes)
- eds. Sultan Catto and Alvany Rocha
- Proceedings of the XXth International Conference on Differential Geometric Methods in Theoretical Physics New York City, USA
- (Singapore; River Edge, N.J.: World Scienrific, 1992)
- OCLC: 25813352
- ISBN 9810208286; ISBN 9810209932
[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.”
He spent his early schooling in Ankara. For years he accompanied his youngest aunt who was studying at the Ankara Conservatory, who later became a soprano in the National Opera House. Sultan spent his afternoons at the conservatory listening to western arias and operas, later at times being on the opera stage as an extra.
Due to his outstanding aptitude for mathematics and music, 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 15, 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 [[13]]
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.
