Katok grew up in Moscow, and earned a master's degree from Moscow State University in 1969; however, due to the anti-Semitic and anti-intelligentsia policies of the time, she was denied admission to the doctoral program there and instead worked for several years in the area of early and secondary mathematical education.^[2] She immigrated to the US in 1978,^[2] and earned her doctorate from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1983 under the supervision of Don Zagier.^[2][3] She joined the Pennsylvania State University faculty in 1990.^[2]

Katok founded the Electronic Research Announcements of the American Mathematical Society in 1995; it was renamed in 2007 to the Electronic Research Announcements in Mathematical Sciences, and she remains its managing editor.^[4]

Katok was an American Mathematical Society (AMS) Council member at large.^[5]

Katok is the author of:

• Fuchsian Groups, Chicago Lectures in Mathematics, University of Chicago Press, 1992.^[6] Russian edition, Faktorial Press, Moscow, 2002.
• p-adic Analysis Compared with Real, Student Mathematical Library, vol. 37, American Math. Soc., 2007.^[7] Russian edition, MCCME Press, Moscow, 2004.

Additionally, she coedited the book MASS Selecta: Teaching and learning advanced undergraduate mathematics (American Math. Soc., 2003).^[8]

Katok was the 2004 Emmy Noether Lecturer of the Association for Women in Mathematics.^[2] In 2012 she and her husband, mathematician Anatole Katok, both became fellows of the American Mathematical Society.^[9]