Józef Henryk Przytycki (English: /ˌjuːsəf pʃəˈtɪski/, Polish: [ˈjuzɛf pʂɨˈtɨt͡ski]; born October 1953 in Warsaw, Poland), is a mathematician specializing in the fields of knot theory and topology.
In 1987, he and Pawel Traczyk published "Invariants of links of Conway type" (Kobe J. Math. 4, 115−139, 1987), which included a description of what is now called the HOMFLY(PT) polynomial. Postal delays prevented Przytycki and Traczyk from receiving full recognition alongside the other six discoverers.
A native of Poland, Przytycki received a Master of Science degree in mathematics from Warsaw University in 1977 and, after emigrating to the United States, a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia University, where his advisor was Joan Birman. He is currently a professor of mathematics at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He has had several students who obtained doctorate degrees under his supervision. He has authored and co-authored many mathematical publications, including more than 100 research papers, 10 conference proceedings and 2 books.
Every semester since 1995, Józef Przytycki organizes the conference Knots in Washington. He also co-organized several international Knot Theory conferences in Europe, for example Knots in Poland (1995, 2003 and 2010), Knots in Hellas (1998), and the Advanced School and Conference on Knot Theory and its Applications to Physics and Biology, Trieste, Italy (2009).
Józef Przytycki is married to computational biologist and mathematician Teresa Przytycka (born 1958). Their elder son Tomasz was born November 11, 1987; their younger son Pawel was born December 1, 1989.