Scott D. Tremaine
Appointment
Advisory Committee Chair
Gravity & the Extreme Universe
About
Scott Tremaine is an astrophysicist who researches the dynamics of astrophysical systems, including planet formation and evolution, comets, galaxies and other stellar systems.
He has made seminal contributions to understanding the formation and evolution of planetary systems, comets, black holes, star clusters, galaxies and galaxy systems. Tremaine predicted the Kuiper belt of comets beyond Neptune, and, with colleague Peter Goldreich, the existence of shepherd satellites and density waves in Saturn’s ring system, as well as the phenomenon of planetary migration. He interpreted double-nuclei galaxies, such as the nearby Andromeda galaxy, as eccentric stellar disks, and elucidated the role of dynamical friction in galaxy evolution.
Awards
- Member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2002
- Fellow, Royal Societies of London and Canada, 1994
- Steacie Prize, 1989
- Helen B. Warner Prize, American Astronomical Society, 1983
- Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 1982–86
Relevant Publications
Lyskova, N. et al. “Comparison of simple mass estimators for slowly rotating elliptical galaxies.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 450, no. 4 (2015): 3442–3457.
Tremaine, S. “The Statistical Mechanics of Planet Orbits.” The Astrophysical Journal 807, no. 2 (2015): 11.
Kocsis, B., and S. Tremaine. “A numerical study of vector resonant relaxation.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 448, no. 4 (2015): 3265–3296.
Tremaine, S. “Relativistic Redshifts in Quasar Broad Lines.” The Astrophysical Journal 794, no. 1 (2014): 13.
Lissauer, J., R. Dawson, and S. Tremaine. “Advances in exoplanet science from Kepler.” Nature 513, no. 7518 (2014): 336–44.