Piet Hut

Piet Hut is a Dutch astrophysicist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he served as Head of the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies from 2002 to 2023. He is best known for co-developing the Barnes-Hut simulation algorithm for computing gravitational interactions among large numbers of particles. He co-founded the B612 Foundation for the prevention of asteroid impacts, and asteroid 17031 Piethut is named in his honor.

• The Gravitational Million-Body Problem: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Star Cluster Dynamics (with Douglas Heggie) (2003) Book