Career
He is (with Franco P Preparata) the author of Computational Geometry (Springer-Verlag, 1985), which was for many years the standard textbook in computational geometry, and is known for the Shamos–Hoey sweep line algorithm for line segment intersection detection and for the rotating calipers technique for finding the width and diameter of a geometric figure. His publications also include works on electronic voting, the game of billiards, and intellectual property law in the digital age. He was a fellow of Sigma Xi (1974-1983), had an International Business Machines Corporation Fellowship at Yale University (1974-1975), was Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics National Lecturer (1977-1978), distinguished lecturer in computer science at the University of Rochester (1978), visited McGill University (1979), and belonged to the Duquesne University Law Review (1980-1981).
Since 2001 he is a Billiard Worldcup Association official referee.
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 Mississippi in Information Technology eBusiness Technology program at Carnegie Mellon University.
