Name Gareth Williams | Role Astronomer | |
Gareth Vaughan Williams is an English-American astronomer, who is the associate director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC). He joined the MPC in January 1990, and as such is the longest-serving staff member presently there. He is an IAU member and is the MPC representative on various IAU committees and working groups, including the Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature and is secretary of the Working Group on Small Body Nomenclature. Gareth got his undergraduate degree in astronomy at University College London, and his PhD in 2013 from the Open University. He is known for recovering the lost asteroids 878 Mildred in 1991 and 719 Albert in 2000.
He also identified the earliest known observation of a Jupiter trojan, when he linked A904 RD, an object seen on only a single night by E. E. Barnard, with (12126) 1999 RM11. Barnard's observations, which he initially believed belonged to Saturn IX (Phoebe), were sufficient to show that the object was distant, but he did not follow it up. The first Jupiter Trojan to be recognized as such, 588 Achilles, was discovered in 1906.
Minor planet 3202 Graff, a Hilda asteroid discovered by Max Wolf at Heidelberg in 1908, was named in his honor on 10 April 1990 (M.P.C. 16245).