Piet Hut
Piet Hut (born September 26, 1952 in Utrecht ) a Dutch astrophysicist. He is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS).
Hut studied at the University of Utrecht (where he studied particle physics with Martinus Veltman ) with the degree in 1977 and received his doctorate in 1981 at the University of Amsterdam with Ed van den Heuvel , where he worked at the Astronomical Institute from 1978. In 1984 he became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley , and in 1985 he became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study.
He is best known for numerical simulations in astrophysics, as one of the developers of the Barnes-Hut algorithm (1986 with Joshua Barnes ), which significantly accelerated the simulation of the gravitational interaction of star clusters on the computer and, for example, enabled the simulation of galaxy collisions . He is involved in various supercomputer projects for astrophysical simulations, including the GRAPE project at the University of Tokyo.
In 2002 he founded the B612 Foundation with Ed Lu , Rusty Schweickart and others, an association of scientists that is supposed to plan measures to prevent a possible impact by asteroids on Earth. Research on the impact of the asteroid that contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs on the Cretaceous-Tertiary border was his entry into interdisciplinary research and other interdisciplinary activities. He is a member of the Husserl Circle, has participated in academic workshops with the Dalai Lama and participated in the World Economic Forum . He is involved in developments in computer visualization and virtual reality in teaching and research and works with computer scientists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers.
From 1985 to 1987 he was a Sloan Research Fellow .
In 2000 he was involved in labor court proceedings with the IAS. The IAS wanted to terminate him because his scientific field of work did not correspond to the ideas of the institute management, who had originally appointed him as the future successor to John Bahcall in the management of the astrophysics department. Hut received the support of many prominent astrophysicists. The process ended in an out-of-court settlement, Hut quit the School of Natural Sciences and headed a newly established program of interdisciplinary studies.
He is a US citizen.
Since 1996 he has been a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . In 2004 the asteroid (17031) Piethut was named after him.
Fonts
- with D. Heggie The Gravitational Million Body Problem: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Star Cluster Dynamics , Cambridge University Press 2003
- with Gerald J. Sussman Advanced computing for Science , Scientific American 1987
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hat, Piet |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 26, 1952 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Utrecht |