Brett James Gladman (born April 19, 1966) is a Canadian astronomer and a full professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Physics and Astronomy in Vancouver, British Columbia. He holds the Canada Research Chair in planetary astronomy. He does both theoretical work (large-scale numerical simulations of planetary dynamics) and observational optical astronomy (being a discoverer of many planetary moons and minor planets).

Career

Gladman is best known for his work in dynamical astronomy in the Solar System. He has studied the transport of meteorites between planets, the delivery of meteoroids from the main asteroid belt, and the possibility of the transport of life via this mechanism, known as panspermia. He also studies planet formation, especially the puzzle of how the giant planets came to be. He is discoverer or co-discoverer of many astronomical bodies in the Solar System, asteroids, Kuiper Belt comets, and many moons of the giant planets: Gladman is a member of the Canada–France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS), and the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS) which has detected and tracked the world's largest sample of well-understood Kuiper belt comets, including unusual objects like ("Buffy") and ("Drac"), the first trans-Neptunian object on a retrograde orbit around the Sun.

Honors and awards

Gladman was awarded the H. C. Urey Prize by the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in 2002. The main-belt asteroid 7638 Gladman is named in his honor. During 2008–2011 he served as member and chair of the Science Advisory Council of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He was awarded a Killam Research Fellowship in 2015.

List of discovered minor planets

Partial listing only below; discoveries number in the many hundreds of asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects.