Jack Wisdom
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Jack Wisdom is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D from Caltech in 1981. His research interests are the dynamics of the Solar System.
Wisdom's 1981 dissertation demonstrated for the first time the theoretical reason for the clearing of the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt.[1][2][3] His work has also brought to light the chaotic rotation of Hyperion[4] and chaos in the orbital evolution of Pluto.[5]
Wisdom is credited with developing "numerous analytical and numerical techniques" that are fundamental to modern celestial mechanics,[3] most notably the symplectic map for the n-body problem (developed together with Matthew J. Holman),[6] which "now forms the core of nearly every solar system dynamics integration scheme in use today."[3]
Jack Wisdom is co-author of Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. His 2003 paper in Science[7] on a new geometric phase effect which Wisdom calls "spacetime swimming" has attracted considerable attention, although it is not yet clear whether this effect has practical utility or even can be used to devise new tests of relativistic gravitation theories.
[edit] Awards
- H. C. Urey Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1986)
- Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy of the AAS (1987)
- MacArthur Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation (1994)
- Brouwer Award of the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society (2002)
[edit] External links
- Wisdom's academic home page
- Spacetime swimming from Chris Van Den Broeck (Astronomy, University of Wales)
[edit] References
- ^ Jack Wisdom (1982). "The origin of the Kirkwood gaps - A mapping for asteroidal motion near the 3/1 commensurability". Astronomical Journal 87: 577-593.
- ^ Jack Wisdom (1983). "Chaotic behavior and the origin of the 3/1 Kirkwood gap". Icarus 56: 51-74.
- ^ a b c 2001 Brouwer Award Citation, AAS DDA
- ^ Jack Wisdom, S.J. Peale, and F. Mignard (1984). "The chaotic rotation of Hyperion". Icarus 58: 137-152.
- ^ Gerald Sussman and Jack Wisdom (1988). "Numerical evidence that the motion of Pluto is chaotic". Science 241: 433-437.
- ^ Jack Wisdom and Matthew Holman (1991). "Symplectic maps for the n-body problem". Astronomical Journal 102: 1528-1538.
- ^ Wisdom, Jack (2003). "Swimming in spacetime: motion by cyclic changes in body shape". Science 299: 1865-1869. doi:.
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