Steve Butler (mathematician)
Steven Kay Butler is an American mathematician specializing in graph theory and combinatorics. He is a Morrill Professor and the Barbara J. Janson Professor in Mathematics at Iowa State University.
Education and career
Butler earned his master's degree at Brigham Young University in 2003. His master's thesis was titled Bounding the Number of Graphs Containing Very Long Induced Paths. He completed a doctorate at the University of California, San Diego in 2008, authoring the dissertation Eigenvalues and Structures of Graphs, advised by Fan Chung. Upon completing his postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Butler joined the Iowa State University faculty in 2011. In 2015, Butler became the 512th person to have an Erdős number of 1, when he published a paper with Paul Erdős and Ronald Graham on Egyptian fractions. In 2017, Butler was named the Barbara J. Janson Professor in Mathematics, and to a Morrill Professorship in 2022.
Butler has been a project lead for the Iowa State University Math REU in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024, and 2025.