Richard P. Binzel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
11868 Kleinrichert | October 2, 1989 |
13014 Hasslacher | November 17, 1987 |
(29196) 1990 YY | December 19, 1990 |
Richard (Rick) P. Binzel is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the inventor of the Torino Scale, a method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as asteroids and comets.
Binzel was awarded the H. C. Urey Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 1991. He also was awarded a MacVicar Faculty Fellowship [1] for teaching excellence at MIT in 1994.
Binzel was on the Planet Definition Committee [2] that developed the proposal to the International Astronomical Union's meeting in Prague in 2006 on whether Pluto should be considered a planet. Their proposal was revised during the meeting and Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.