Rainer Spurzem is a German

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 ...

at the

Astronomisches Rechen-Institut The Astronomical Calculation Institute (; ARI) is a research institute in Heidelberg, Germany, with origins dating back from the 1700s. Beginning in 2005, the ARI became part of the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University (', ). Previous ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

, 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, ''n''-body problem for other applications). ''N''-body ...

galaxies A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and 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 Sys ...

and

star clusters A star cluster is a group of stars held together by self-gravitation. Two main types of star clusters can be distinguished: globular clusters, tight groups of ten thousand to millions of old stars which are gravitationally bound; and open cluste ...

. With

Sverre Aarseth Sverre Johannes Aarseth, (20 July 1934 – 28 December 2024) was a Norwegian research scientist at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Aarseth spent his retirement as an active researcher. He dedicated his career to the d ...

, 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 wa ...

and from the Ministry of Science, Research and Art of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, 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 i ...

. He also designed

gravitySimulator gravitySimulator is a novel supercomputer that incorporates special-purpose GRAPE hardware to solve the gravitational ''n''-body problem. It is housed in the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation (CCRG) at the Rochester Institute o ...

, a special-purpose computer based on

GRAPE A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,0 ...

accelerator boards at the

Rochester Institute of Technology The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in Henrietta, New York, a suburb of Rochester, New York, Rochester. It was founded in 1829. It is one of only two institute of technology, institut ...

.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
* , cartoon on Rainer Spurzem's retirement 21st-century German astronomers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{Germany-astronomer-stub