Draft:Matt Baker (mathematician and magician)

Matt Baker (born January 30, 1973) is an American mathematician who has contributed to number theory, algebraic geometry, arithmetic dynamics, and combinatorics. He is a professor of mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also known for his work as a magician.

Education
Baker did his undergraduate study at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he graduated Summa cum Laude with Highest Honors in 1994. . In 1999, he received his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, where his advisor was Robert F. Coleman. His thesis was titled Torsion Points on Modular Curves.

Academic career
Baker was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow and Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at Harvard University from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, he started a tenure-track position at the University of Georgia and then moved to the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 2004. He took a position as a tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 2011, but moved back to Georgia Tech in 2012.

From 2018 to 2023, he served as Associate Dean for Faculty Development in the Georgia Tech College of Sciences. Since 2022, he has served on the Editorial Committee for the AMS Graduate Studies in Mathematics series

Magic career
Baker's book of original magic tricks, The Buena Vista Shuffle Club. , was published in April 2019 and is now in its third printing. He was a featured performer on Season 10, Episode 5 of the television show Penn & Teller: Fool Us. He has also recorded a Penguin Live Act, a Murphy's "At the Table" lecture , and was the instructor for Vanishing Inc’s Masterclass series in September 2022.

Awards and honors
Baker became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. He is a two-time recipient of a Simons Fellowship in Mathematics, in 2017 and 2023.

In 2015, his paper “Lifting harmonic morphisms I: metrized complexes and Berkovich skeleta”, written with Omid Amini, Erwan Brugallé, and Joseph Rabinoff, won the Best Article Award from Research in the Mathematical Sciences.

In 2010, Baker received the University System of Georgia Board of Regents Teaching Excellence Award.

Baker is also a two-time winner, in 2015 and 2019, of the Greater Atlanta Magician of the Year award.

Personal life
Baker lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and children and maintains a mathematics blog. From 2020-2021, he also wrote a blog on mathematics and magic called Mathemagical Themas

Selected publications
Books
 * Potential Theory and Dynamics on the Berkovich Projective Line (2010).
 * The Buena Vista Shuffle Club (2019).