‘One of the giants’ of mathematics, Anatole Katok, dies aged 73
Katok ventured into intriguing areas, such as the butterfly effect
Anatole Katok, an American mathematician who was a leader in the theoretical exploration of dynamical systems, a subject that treats the way complex aspects of the real world — including weather, disease and the economy — change and develop over time, died April 30 at a medical center in Danville, Pa. He was 73.
The cause was pneumonia and complications from an infection, said his wife, Svetlana Katok.
At his death, Katok was director of the Center for Dynamics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University. Before going to Penn State in 1990, he had taught for six years at the California Institute of Technology. From 1978 to 1984, he was on the University of Maryland faculty. Among colleagues, he was hailed for revolutionizing the study of dynamical systems through sophisticated mathematics. Gregory Margulis, a member of the mathematics faculty at Yale University, called him “one of the giants.”
In his scholarly work, Katok ventured into areas that embraced some of the most intriguing aspects of modern mathematics, including what has been called chaos theory. That is symbolized by the socalled butterfly effect.
At one time, it seemed to scientists that exact prediction was possible for many important natural systems in the world, particularly those composed of inanimate particles, such as the atmosphere and the weather. The belief was that perfect knowledge of the state of the system, and of the rules of interaction that prevailed among its components, would allow for perfect forecasts.
However, the desired degree of precision often proved impossible to obtain. And sometimes, the evolution of a system could depend on just the sort of information that could not be precisely obtained: Its state at any given moment.