Gyula O. H. Katona (born 16 March 1941 in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

) is a Hungarian

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

known for his work in combinatorial set theory, and especially for the

Kruskal–Katona theorem In algebraic combinatorics, the Kruskal–Katona theorem gives a complete characterization of the ''f''-vectors of abstract simplicial complexes. It includes as a special case the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem and can be restated in terms of unifor ...

and his beautiful and elegant proof of the

Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem In mathematics, the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem limits the number of Set (mathematics), sets in a family of sets for which every two sets have at least one element in common. Paul Erdős, Chao Ko, and Richard Rado proved the theorem in 1938, but d ...

in which he discovered a new method, now called Katona's cycle method. Since then, this method has become a powerful tool in proving many interesting results in

extremal set theory Extremal combinatorics is a field of combinatorics, which is itself a part of mathematics. Extremal combinatorics studies how large or how small a collection of finite objects (numbers, graphs, vectors, sets, etc.) can be, if it has to satisfy ce ...

. He is affiliated with the

Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics The Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics () is the research institute in mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It was created in 1950 by Alfréd Rényi, who directed it until his death. Since its creation, the institute has been th ...

of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

. Katona was secretary-general of the

János Bolyai Mathematical Society The János Bolyai Mathematical Society (Bolyai János Matematikai Társulat, BJMT) is the Hungarian mathematical society, named after János Bolyai, a 19th-century Hungarian mathematician, a co-discoverer of non-Euclidean geometry. It is the profe ...

from 1990 to 1996. In 1966 and 1968 he won the

Grünwald Prize Grünwald (transliterated Gruenwald) is German for "green forest" and may refer to: Places * Grünwald, Austria, town in Aigen-Schlägl municipality, Rohrbach, Austria * Grünwald, Bavaria, municipality south of Munich, Germany People * Alfred Gr ...

, awarded by the Bolyai Society to outstanding young mathematicians, he was awarded the

Alfréd Rényi Prize The Alfréd Rényi Prize is awarded biennially by the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics of the Hungarian Academy of Science in honor of founder Alfréd Rényi. By the current rules it is given to one or two fellows of the Institute in recog ...

of the

in 1975, and the same academy awarded him the Prize of the Academy in 1989. In 2011 the Alfréd Rényi Institute, the János Bolyai Society and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences organized a conference in honor of Katona's 70th birthday.. Gyula O.H. Katona is the father of Gyula Y. Katona, another Hungarian mathematician with similar research interests to those of his father.

References

External links

Katona's web site

Katona on IMDB
appearing as himself in N is a Number
2024 Interview with Gyula O. H. Katona
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians Combinatorialists 1941 births Living people {{europe-mathematician-stub