Michael Ian Shamos is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

, book author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, journal editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

, consultant

Consultant

A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...

 and company director. He is (with Franco P. Preparata

Franco P. Preparata

Franco P. Preparata is a computer scientist, the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He is best known for his 1985 computational geometry book with Michael Shamos, for many years the standard textbook in the field, but Preparata has worked in many other areas of computer...

) the author of Computational Geometry (Springer-Verlag, 1985), which was for many years the standard textbook in computational geometry

Computational geometry

Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems are also considered to be part of computational...

, and is known for the Shamos–Hoey sweep line algorithm

Sweep line algorithm

In computational geometry, a sweep line algorithm or plane sweep algorithm is a type of algorithm that uses a conceptual sweep line or sweep surface to solve various problems in Euclidean space...

 for line segment intersection detection and for the rotating calipers

Rotating calipers

In computational geometry, rotating calipers is a method used to construct efficient algorithms for a number of problems.The method was first used by Michael Shamos in 1978 for determining all antipodal pairs of points and vertices on a convex polygon....

 technique for finding the width and diameter

Diameter

In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints are on the circle. The diameters are the longest chords of the circle...

 of a geometric figure. His publications also include works on electronic voting

Electronic voting

Electronic voting is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means of counting votes....

, the game of billiards

Billiards

Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...

, and intellectual property

Intellectual property

Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...

 law in the digital age.

He was a fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society is a non-profit honor society which was founded in 1886 at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a handful of graduate students. Members elect others on the basis of their research achievements or potential...

 (1974–83), had an IBM Fellowship at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 (1974–75),
was SIAM National Lecturer (1977–78), distinguished lecturer in computer science at the University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

 (1978), visited McGill University

McGill University

Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

 (1979), and belonged to the Duquesne University

Duquesne University

Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit is a private Catholic university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded by members of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, Duquesne first opened its doors as the Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost in October 1878 with an enrollment of...

Law Review (1980–81).
He won the first annual Black & White Scotch Achiever’s Award in 1991 for contributions to bagpipe musicography, and the Industry Service Award of the Billiard and Bowling Institute of America, 1996, for contributions to billiard history. Since 2001 he is a Billiard Worldcup Association official referee.

He has been editor in chief of the Journal of Privacy Technology (2003–2006), a member of the editorial boards of Electronic Commerce Research Journal and the Pittsburgh Journal of Technology, Law and Policy, and a contributing editor of Billiards Digest magazine.

Shamos is the author of The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards (Lyons, 1999) among other related works, and is the curator of the Billiards Museum and Archive.

Michael Shamos is the Director of the MS in IT eBusiness Technology program at Carnegie Mellon University.