Edward Belbruno
Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics
Princeton University
Edward Belbruno received his doctoral degree from New York University, Courant Institute in 1980, where he studied under Juergen Moser. He specialized in theoretical celestial mechanics. He went to Boston University as an assistant professor of Mathematics. Interested in applying his theoretical ideas to the more applied arena, he went to JPL in 1985 as an orbital analyst on such missions as Galileo, Magellan, Cassini, Ulysses, Mars Observer, and others. During this time he laid the foundations for the first systematic application of chaos theory to space flight, originally called fuzzy boundary theory, and which allowed for the construction of very low energy paths for spacecraft. Later, this was renamed weak stability boundary theory (WSB). In 1991 he joined the Geometry Center in Minnesota, where he applied his work to space missions and astronomy. He played a key role in the lunar salvage of the satellite HGS-1 in 1998, for which he shared Aviation Week's Laurel Award. Currently, he is at the Applied Mathematics program at Princeton University where he is involved in a project at JPL on his theory and its applications. He also investigates theoretical problems on dynamics and has completed a lengthy work on Hill's problem. In addition he is an artist with a number of international exhibitions, with one upcoming at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.