Claudio Maccone (born 6 February 1948, in

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

(Turin), Italy) is an Italian

SETI Seti or SETI may refer to: Astrobiology * SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. ** SETI Institute, an astronomical research organization *** SETIcon, a former convention organized by the SETI Institute ** Berkeley SETI Research Cent ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

, space scientist and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

Career

He obtained two degrees from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

: in physics in 1972 and in mathematics in 1974. He obtained his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

at the Department of

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

, England in September 1980. In 1985 he briefly held a position as "Professore di ruolo" in Mathematics at "Liceo Scientifico Albert Einstein" in Turin. He then joined the Space Systems Group of Aeritalia (later called Alenia Spazio S.p.A. and now Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A.) in Turin on September 19,1985, and immediately got involved in the design of new space missions. In 2002 he was awarded the "

Giordano Bruno Giordano Bruno ( , ; ; born Filippo Bruno; January or February 1548 – 17 February 1600) was an Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, astrologer, cosmological theorist, and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which concep ...

Award" by the SETI League, "for his efforts to establish a radio observatory on the far side of the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

." After his early retirement from Alenia Spazio S.p.A. on December 30, 2004, he taught at Politecnico di Torino for five years (2005-2009) at Post-Doctoral level. He was Advisor to Ph.D. candidates in the Aerospace and Electronics Departments of Politecnico di Torino. Since 2010 he is the Director for Scientific Space Exploration of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA, based in Paris, France). From 2012 to 2021 he served as Chair of the IAA

Permanent Committee. He has published 149 scientific and technical papers.

Books

His first technical book was ''

Telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

, KLT and Relativity'' in 1994
link
In 1998 his second book was ''The

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

as a

Gravitational Lens A gravitational lens is matter, such as a galaxy cluster, cluster of galaxies or a point particle, that bends light from a distant source as it travels toward an observer. The amount of gravitational lensing is described by Albert Einstein's Ge ...

: Proposed Space Missions'' (proposing FOCAL space telescope), IAA Book Award 1999. Both books were published by IPI Press, at Colorado Springs, CO, USA
website
Maccone's third book ''Deep Space Flight and Communications – Exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens'' was published by Praxis-Springer in 2009. This revolutionary book was translated into Chinese by 2014 and awarded the IAA Book Award in 2018
Website
In September 2012, his fourth book, ''Mathematical SETI - Statistics, Signal Processing, Space Missions'' was published
website
Mathematical SETI
/ref> Maccone's fifth highly mathematical book, ''Evo-SETI – Life Evolution Statistics on Earth and Exoplanets'', was published in February 2021
website
This is Mathematical Astrobiology, IAA Book Award 2022. Maccone's sixth book is ''The Living Galaxy'', co-authored with Eugenio Mieli and Andrea M. F. Valli. It is currently in print in both the English and Italian version, and should be published in September 2024.

Honours and awards

* The central main-belt binary asteroid 11264 Claudiomaccone was named in Maccone's honor on 2 September 2001
NASA website
* Maccone is a member of the

International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; , UAI) is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach, education, and developmen ...

(IAU) and an Associate of “Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)” in Italy. * Since December 2021 Maccone is serving as Chair of the IAA Moon Farside Protection Permanent Committee. His Co-chair is Prof. Jack O. Burns (

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a Public university, public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a Federated state, state, it is the fla ...

). * On February 8, 2024, Maccone gave his third speech at the United Nations COPUOS in Vienna about the Moon Farside Protection. * Finally, on March 21-22, 2024, Maccone and co-workers run the First IAA Symposium on Moon Farside Protection in Turin (Torino, Italy), described a
this
website

External links

The Sun's Gravity lens and its use for Interstellar Exploration
NASA-JPL TALK, August 18th, 1999
Deep Space Flight and Communications
Talk at the

SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...

, 11/25/2009, (Retrieved 09/30/2011) * * , Stanford University, April 2016 * , at the Big History Conference on July 15, 2019
First IAA symposium on Moon Farside protection
Three talks by Claudio Maccone at the First IAA Symposium on Moon Farside Protection, Turin (Italy), April 21-22, 2024
Claudio Maccone
ADS

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maccone, Claudio 1948 births 20th-century Italian astronomers Alumni of King's College London Living people