Jack Wisdom is an Emeritus Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. in Physics from Rice University in 1976, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1981. He joined the MIT faculty in 1984. His research has focused on applications of Hamiltonian dynamics to problems of planetary dynamics. He has particularly focused on problems that involve chaotic behavior.
Wisdom is a coauthor (with Gerald Jay Sussman, Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT) of two books: "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics" and "Functional Differential Geometry." The novel feature of both books is the use of programming to provide a precise and unambiguous understanding of the ideas and mathematics of each subject.
Beginning in 1986, Wisdom and Sussman have investigated the stability of our solar system through long term numerical simulations. These investigations were initially carried out with the Digital Orrery, a special purpose computer built by Sussman and colleagues. In 1988 Wisdom and Sussman reported numerical evidence that the motion of Pluto, then considered one of the planets, is chaotic. The Digital Orrery is now retired at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. In 1992, Wisdom and Sussman showed that our solar system evolves chaotically through direct numerical integration of the full equations of motion. This result extended by two orders of magnitude the longest numerical integration of the solar system. It was made possible by two innovations: the development of a new integration algorithm ("Symplectic Maps for the N-Body Problem," of Wisdom and his Ph.D. student Matthew Holman), which is more stable and an order of magnitude faster than conventional integration algorithms, and the building of the Supercomputer Toolkit, another special purpose computer built by Sussman and colleagues.
The symplectic n-body mapping method generalized the mapping method introduced by Wisdom in his 1981 Ph.D. thesis. It is based on the idea that the algorithm can be described by a Hamiltonian, and the relationship of the algorithm to the problem being integrated can be derived using Hamiltonian perturbation theory. Improvements in the method have also been derived through perturbation theory. Though the resulting algorithms are symplectic, they were not motivated by the idea of matching Taylor series by symplectic Lie series ("symplectic integration"). The symplectic n-body mapping method, and variations, are widely used in the study of the long term evolution of planetary systems, and their subsystems (e.g. satellite systems).
The symplectic mapping method was generalized to include rotational dynamics by Jihad Touma, in his Ph.D. thesis with Wisdom. The resulting method was used by Touma and Wisdom in 1993 to show that the evolution of the obliquity (tilt of the spin axis) of Mars is wildly chaotic, varying from 0 to 60 degrees on a multimillion year timescale.
Wisdom has studied the dynamics of numerous other subsystems in the solar system within this Hamiltonian framework and using these methods. These problems include the explanation of the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt (chaotic zones associated with orbital resonances that lead to removal of material in the gap by planet crossing or encounters with the Sun), the delivery of meteorites from the asteroid belt to the Earth, the exploration of satellite resonance dynamics, the stability of the Kuiper belt of comets in the outer solar system, and the origin and evolution of Earth's Moon.
Education
Rice University, B.S. (Physics), 1976.
California Institute of Technology, Ph.D. (Physics), 1981.
Honors and Awards
2020 Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society
2014 Visiting Meyerhoff Professor, Weizmann Institute
2008 Member, National Academy of Sciences
2007 Visiting Miller Professor, UC Berkeley
2007 Moore Distinguished Scholar, Caltech
2002 Dirk Brouwer Award of the AAS Division for Dynamical Astronomy
(citation)
1994 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship
1992 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1988-1994 NSF Presidential Young Investigator
1987 Helen B. Warner Prize of the American Astronomical Society
1986 Harold C. Urey Prize of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences
1975 Claude W. Heaps Prize, Rice University
(Essay)
"Long Term Evolution of the Solar System"
Jack Wisdom 1992, proceedings of the IAU symposium on "Chaos,
Resonances, and Collective Dynamical Phenomena in the Solar System"
held in Angra Dos Reis, Brazil, 1991.
''The Outer Solar System for 200 Million Years''
J. Applegate, M. Douglas, Y. Gursel, G.J. Sussman, J. Wisdom, 1986,
Astron. J. 92, 176. reprinted in Lecture Notes in
Physics #267 -- Use of supercomputers in stellar dynamics, Springer
Verlag, 1986.
''The Chaotic Rotation of Hyperion''
J. Wisdom, S.J. Peale, and F. Mignard 1984, Icarus 58,
137. reprinted in Hamiltonian Dynamical Systems, eds.
R.S. MacKay and J.D. Meiss (Adam Hilger, 1987).
