Catharina Stroppel (born 1971)^[1] is a German mathematician whose research concerns representation theory, low-dimensional topology, and category theory. She is a professor of mathematics at the University of Bonn, and vice-coordinator of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics in Bonn.^[2][3]

Stroppel earned a diploma in mathematics and theology from the University of Freiburg in 1998.^[3] She completed her doctorate, also from the University of Freiburg, in 2001, under the supervision of Wolfgang Soergel.^[4] After short-term positions at the University of Leicester and Aarhus University, she joined the University of Glasgow as a research associate in 2004, and was promoted to lecturer in 2005 and reader in 2007. In 2008 she moved to Bonn as a professor.^[3]

In 2007, the London Mathematical Society awarded Stroppel their Whitehead Prize "for her contributions to representation theory, in particular in the framework of categorifications and its applications to low-dimensional topology".^[5] She was an invited speaker at the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians.^[6] In 2018, she became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.^[7] She was named MSRI Simons Professor for 2009-2010.^[8] She was awarded a 2023 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize “in recognition of her excellent work in representation theory, especially on the topic of category theory.”^[9]