Biographical Information
Matthew Holman is an Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics and a Lecturer in the Harvard University
Department of Astronomy.
Holman received an S.B. degree in Mathematics in 1989 and a Ph.D. in
Planetary Sciences in 1994, both
from MIT. After postdoctoral positions at the
National Astronomical Observatory of
Japan and the Canadian Institute for
Theoretical Astrophysics, he joined the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory in 1997 as a tenure-track civil servant and received
tenure in 2001.
Holman is credited with the discovery of satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Holman, along with Jack Wisdom, developed an algorithm for the efficient and accurate numerical integration of the orbits in the solar system n-body problem. This is now the framework of nearly every solar system integration package available.
Holman, along with Norman Murray, received the 1999 Newcomb Cleveland Award, given annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for the outstanding refereed publication in Science.