Michael E. Brown

Michael (Mike) E. Brown ( born June 5, 1965 in Huntsville, Alabama) is an American astronomer who is known for discovering the dwarf planet Eris and the related reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet, which he also wrote a book.

Life

Mike Brown graduated from the Bachelor of Arts in 1987 at Princeton University. He graduated in 1990 at the University of California, Berkeley and completed his doctorate in 1994. In 1997 he was a lecturer at the California Institute of Technology. He teaches at Berkeley from 2002 as associate professor and from 2003 as a professor.

Brown is married to Diane Binney since March 1, 2003, 2005 was born his daughter.

Brown was picked up by Time magazine in its list of the 100 most influential people of 2006. For 2012, it the Kavli Prize for Astrophysics was awarded.

Work

Brown is mainly concerned with the spectroscopy of objects in the outer solar system and was involved in the discovery of several large Transneptunischer objects, such as (50000) Quaoar (2002 ), 2002 VR128 (2002 ) ( 90377 ) Sedna (2003), ( 90482 ) Orcus (2003 ) ( 136199 ) Eris (2003) and ( 136472 ) Makemake ( 2005).

When Sedna is probably the first known object of the inner Oort Cloud, at the dwarf planet Eris is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt. Eris may be larger than Pluto.