Pedro Elias Zadunaisky

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Pedro Elias Zadunaisky (born December 10, 1917 in Rosario , Argentina , † October 7, 2009 ) was an Argentine astronomer and mathematician .

Zadunaisky attended the University of Rosario, Santa Fe (Universidad Nacional de Rosario). After graduating as a civil engineer, he studied mathematics there and did his doctorate under Beppo Levi with a thesis on the orbits of Jupiter's moons . He received three Guggenheim fellowships , at Columbia University (1957), Princeton University (1958) and at the University of Texas at Austin (1977). In 1966 he left Argentina due to the political situation at the time. He soon returned and taught at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata , in addition, he led investigations at Argentina's National Commission on Space Activity. In the 1960s Zadunaisky Senior Astronomer was the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a visiting professor at Georgetown University in Washington (DC).

Zadunaisky dealt with celestial mechanics . His professional successes included u. a. the determination of the orbit of Saturn's moon Phoebe and Halley's comet as well as the first satellites of the USA , Explorer 1 , Vanguard II and Echo 1 .

Inspired by a numerical method by Zadunaisky, Hans Jörg Stetter developed his Defect Correction Method in the numerics of ordinary differential equations.

In 2000 the asteroid (4617) Zadunaisky was named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marcelino Cereijido: Un asteroide que debería llamarse Mauricio (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Vanessa Hand Orellana: Pedro Elias Zadunaisky, 1917–2009: Mathematician and astronomer aided US in space race with Russians , Chicago Tribune , accessed January 21, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Zadunaisky, Pedro Elias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine astronomer and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosario , Argentina
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 2009