Brian G. Marsden

Brian Geoffrey Marsden (5 August 1937 – 18 November 2010) was a British astronomer who made important contributions to the study of objects in space. He served as the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, an organization that collects and shares data about asteroids, comets, and other small bodies in our solar system.

Marsden was especially known for his work in calculating the orbits of these objects, helping scientists understand where they were and where they might go in the future. His calculations were often used to predict when comets would return to view from Earth or to determine the paths of newly discovered asteroids.

Beyond his scientific work, Marsden also helped keep the records of discoveries in astronomy, ensuring that important findings were shared with the worldwide astronomy community. He remained director emeritus of the Minor Planet Center from 2006 until his death in 2010.

Education

Brian G. Marsden studied at The Perse School in Cambridge. He later attended New College, Oxford, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. He completed his PhD at Yale University, with Dirk Brouwer as his thesis advisor.

Life

Brian Marsden specialized in celestial mechanics and astrometry. He collected data on the positions of asteroids and comets and computed their orbits, often from minimal observational information. He provided their future positions on International Astronomical Union (IAU) circulars. In addition to serving as director of the Minor Planet Center since 1978, he was also the director of the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) from 1968 to 1999.

Marsden helped to recover once lost asteroids and lost comets. He successfully predicted the 1992 return of the once-lost Comet Swift-Tuttle. In May 1993, Marsden concluded that the trajectory of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 would put it on a course to collide with Jupiter in July 1994, marking the first ever time that a cometary-planetary impact was successfully predicted. He once proposed that Pluto should be cross-listed as both a planet and a minor planet, but this proposal was not accepted. Later, Pluto was designated a dwarf planet.

Family

Brian Marsden married Nancy Lou Zissell, and they had two children, a daughter named Cynthia and a son named Jonathan. He even named a minor planet, 2298 Cindijon, after them. Marsden often said that his mother inspired his love for astronomy. She showed him the partial solar eclipse of September 10, 1942, and the fact that scientists could predict exactly when it would happen fascinated him.

Honours

Brian G. Marsden received many awards for his work in astronomy. He was given the Merlin Medal and Gift from the British Astronomical Association in 1965, the Walter Goodacre Medal from the same association in 1979, and the George Van Biesbroeck Prize from the American Astronomical Society in 1989. He also received the Brouwer Award from the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society in 1995 and an award from the Royal Astronomical Society in 2006.

Two space objects were named after him: Asteroid 1877 Marsden and the Marsden Group of sun-grazing comets. He was also a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.