Rainer Spurzem is a German

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...

at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

, Germany. His speciality is the

N-body simulation In physics and astronomy, an ''N''-body simulation is a simulation of a dynamical system of particles, usually under the influence of physical forces, such as gravity (see ''n''-body problem for other applications). ''N''-body simulations ar ...

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

and

star clusters Star clusters are large groups of stars. Two main types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters are tight groups of ten thousand to millions of old stars which are gravitationally bound, while open clusters are more loosely clust ...

. With Sverre Aarseth, he was the first to simulate core collapse of a star cluster using a direct N-body algorithm on a Cray supercomputer. Rainer Spurzem is a leader of the GRACE project, which uses reconfigurable hardware for astrophysical particle simulations. The GRACE project was funded via grants from the

Volkswagen Foundation The Volkswagen Foundation (German: '' VolkswagenStiftung'') is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research. It is not affiliated to the present company, the Volkswagen Group. It w ...

and from the Ministry of Science, Research and Art of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

. He also designed gravitySimulator, a special-purpose computer based on

GRAPE A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry (botany), berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non-Climacteric (botany), climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of ...

accelerator boards at the

Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in the town of Henrietta, New York, Henrietta in the Rochester, New York, metropolitan area. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degree ...

.S. Harfst ''et al.'' (2007)
Performance analysis of direct N-body algorithms on special-purpose supercomputers
''New Astronomy'', 12, 357

References

External links

Rainer Spurzem's home page

The GRACE Project
21st-century German astronomers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{Germany-astronomer-stub