Piet Hut
Professor
Program in
Interdisciplinary Studies

Piet Hut’s research concerns investigations of the structure of the world, from different points of view. His work as an astrophysicist aims at increasing understanding of the physical world on the largest scales in time and space, by studying the history of the universe. His Program in Interdisciplinary Studies spans a range of disciplines from physics, astrophysics, geology and paleontology to artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy and computer science. The author of more than 150 publications, Hut was recently honored in December 2004 when a main-belt asteroid was named “17031 Piethut” by NASA’s Planetary Data System.

University of Amsterdam, Ph.D. 1981; Institute for Advanced Study, Member 1981-84, Professor 1985-; University of California at Berkeley, Assistant Professor 1984-85; Sloan Foundation Fellow 1985-1987; Trustee, John von Neumann Supercomputer Center, 1985-1990; Editor, Springer-Verlag Series in Computational Physics, 1986-1991; Petaflops Point Design Studies Award, 1996; Corresponding Member, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1996-; Member, Lindisfarne Association, 1997-; President, Kira Institute, 1997-; Member, International Advisory Council of the Foreign Policy Association, New York, 2000-; Member, Science Working Group of the National Virtual Observatory Initiative, 2001-; Member, Advisory Board of the Centre for Subjectivity Research, Denmark, 2002-; Secretary and Member of the Board, B612 Foundation, 2002-.