Jack Wisdom

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.cite journal
author= Jack Wisdom
title= "The origin of the Kirkwood gaps - A mapping for asteroidal motion near the 3/1 commensurability"
journal= Astronomical Journal
year= 1982
volume= 87
pages= 577–593
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1982AJ.....87..577W
doi= 10.1086/113132] cite journal
author= Jack Wisdom
title= "Chaotic behavior and the origin of the 3/1 Kirkwood gap"
journal= Icarus
year= 1983
volume= 56
pages= 51–74
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983Icar...56...51W
doi= 10.1016/0019-1035(83)90127-6] [http://dda.harvard.edu/brouwer_award/brouw2001.html 2001 Brouwer Award Citation] , AAS DDA] His work has also brought to light the chaotic rotation of Hyperioncite journal
author= Jack Wisdom, S.J. Peale, and F. Mignard
title= "The chaotic rotation of Hyperion"
journal= Icarus
year= 1984
volume= 58
pages= 137–152
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984Icar...58..137W
doi= 10.1016/0019-1035(84)90032-0] and chaos in the orbital evolution of Pluto.cite journal
author= Gerald Sussman and Jack Wisdom
title= "Numerical evidence that the motion of Pluto is chaotic"
journal= Science
year= 1988
volume= 241
pages= 433–437
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988Sci...241..433S
doi= 10.1126/science.241.4864.433
pmid= 17792606]

Wisdom is credited with developing "numerous analytical and numerical techniques" that are fundamental to modern celestial mechanics, most notably the symplectic map for the n-body problem (developed together with Matthew J. Holman),cite journal
author= Jack Wisdom and Matthew Holman
title= "Symplectic maps for the n-body problem"
journal= Astronomical Journal
year= 1991
volume= 102
pages= 1528–1538
url=http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1991AJ....102.1528W
doi= 10.1086/115978] which "now forms the core of nearly every solar system dynamics integration scheme in use today."

Jack Wisdom is co-author of Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. His 2003 paper in "Science"cite journal | author=Wisdom, Jack |title = Swimming in spacetime: motion by cyclic changes in body shape| journal=Science| volume=299| year=2003| pages=1865–1869| doi=10.1126/science.1081406 |pmid = 12610230] 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.

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)

External links

* [http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/users/wisdom/ Wisdom's academic home page]
* [http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/~spxcv/science.html Spacetime swimming] from Chris Van Den Broeck (Astronomy, University of Wales)

References