| Nick Katz | |
|---|---|
| Born | 7 December 1943 Baltimore |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Princeton University |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Doctoral advisor | Bernard Dwork |
| Doctoral students | William Messing Neal Koblitz Richard Crew Benji Fisher Robert Sutor |
| Known for | Ax–Katz theorem Grothendieck–Katz p-curvature conjecture |
Nicholas Michael Katz (born 7 December 1943) is an American mathematician, working in the fields of algebraic geometry, particularly on p-adic methods, monodromy and moduli problems, and number theory. He is currently a professor in the Mathematics Department at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.
He was a student of Bernard Dwork and then spent time in France, at IHES and Orsay, where he adapted methods of scheme theory and category theory to the theory of modular forms. Subsequently he has applied geometric methods to various exponential sums. Mathematician and cryptographer Neal Koblitz was one of Katz's students.
He played a significant role as a sounding-board for Andrew Wiles when Wiles was developing in secret his proof of Fermat's last theorem.