Daniel Biss

Daniel Kálmán Biss (born 1977 in Akron, Ohio) is an American politician who ran as a Democrat for the Illinois State House of Representatives in the 17th District in 2008, losing to the Republican Party incumbent Elizabeth Coulson. He is currently working for the office of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn as a policy advisor. On August 27, 2009, Biss announced that he is again running for the 17th District seat. Coulson vacated the seat to run for Congress. Prior to politics, Biss was a mathematician at the University of Chicago.
Biography
Mathematics
Biss is a graduate of Harvard University and MIT and was an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago. In 1998, he was awarded the Morgan Prize, a top national prize for an outstanding mathematics research contribution by an undergraduate. Biss' Ph.D. thesis was hailed as "a landmark paper", and was published in the Annals of Mathematics, one of the most prestigious mathematics publications. A crucial mistake was later discovered by a Fulkerson Prize winner, Nikolai Mnev, who published his criticisms in September 2007, and wrote that some experts in the field had known of the mistake for two years. In 2009, Biss admitted that his proof of the main result is incorrect, and published an erratum, thanking Mnev for pointing it out. In addition, an entirely separate work done with a collaborator after his PhD, published in the prestigious Inventiones Mathematicae, was also later determined to be fatally flawed; the authors credit Masatoshi Sato and Tom Church for finding the mistake.
In 2004, Biss published a letter "Elephant in the Internet", in the Notices of the AMS, on the importance and beauty of mathematical writing, saying:
:"A physics paper, like a newspaper article, is not meant for posterity; dotting of i's and crossing of t's is meant to happen after the fact, and is not in any case the 'real' work of a physicist. A mathematics paper, on the other hand, is supposed to be a work of art: perfect, complete, and beautiful ... mathematics can only go in one direction: toward the profane."
Biss also wrote comments on the "Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability", which appear in an appendix to John Green's novel An Abundance of Katherines.
Politics
Biss became involved in politics as a volunteer for the presidential campaign of John Kerry in 2004. After becoming a candidate for the legislature in 2007, Biss gained media attention for his successful early use of online tools for publicity and fundraising. Biss won the primary uncontested. The general election pitted Biss against a multi-term incumbent Republican Elizabeth Coulson, who outspent Biss. Biss got 48.5% of the vote, losing by 1,774 votes to incumbent.
According to Biss, his run for public office in 2007-08 effectively ended his academic career. He remained active in Chicago-area Democratic politics, writing and speaking about local progressive politics, media, and fundraising. In May, 2009, he was slated to become the president of the Democratic Party of Evanston at its June, 2009 elections.

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