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Andrea Milani began his scientific research in pure mathematics, but soon
became interested in celestial mechanics, planetary dynamics, geophysics
and other branches of applied mathematics. While his initial foray into
these fields led to the development of a synthetic theory of planetary
motion, Andrea is perhaps best known for his research in asteroid dynamics,
where he has authored and coauthored several key developments in the field.
His analytical and synthetic theories of asteroid motion have allowed him
to determine the positions of non-linear secular resonances across the
solar system as well as compute asteroid proper elements for main belt,
Trojan, and near-Earth asteroids. Working closely with his collaborators,
Andreas work has led to proper element calculations that have been used
to identify asteroid families, study their origin and evolution, and
assess the long term dynamics of asteroids. He has also pioneered studies
of chaos in the motion of asteroids and how they could be used to determine
the ages of asteroid families. In more recent years, Andrea has helped
develop new methods of preliminary orbit determination for small solar
system bodies, some which are near-Earth asteroids that may be on collision
trajectories with the Earth. His analytical and computational methods of
identifying fast-moving solar system objects from multiple observations
and then linking those data together are designed to take full advantage
of the huge number of observations expected from next generation surveys
searching for hazardous asteroids and comets. Andrea maintains permanent
web services dedicated to providing general information on all known
asteroids (NeoDyS, AstDyS), and at these sites he has made publically
available many of the celestial mechanics tools he has developed with
his collaborators over the years (e.g., ORBFIT). He has served as president
of the IAU Commission 7 (Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy),
he has served on the editorial boards of several journals, and he has
written or edited a number of books and textbooks on planetary science
topics. Finally, in his capacity as a full professor of the Department
of Mathematics at the University of Pisa, he has supervised several
talented young students, some which now make up part of his extraordinarily
creative and prolific team of scientists.
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