Activities in 1987-1988 and 1988-1989

From the Report for Academic Year 1987-1989
of the Institute for Advanced Study

PIET HUT'S research has continued to focus on the interface between computer science and astrophysics. Following contacts with an innovative company that produces a parallel computer with more than 65,000 processors, he collaborated with the company's scientists and colleagues from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tokyo University to develop astrophysics software for parallel computers. The immediate results have been published; in time this project may lead to a new generation of computer codes capable of simulating the evolution of dense stellar systems.

A projected study of collisions between galaxies was jeopardized with the withdrawal of National Science Foundation support for the John von Neumann Supercomputer Center in Princeton. The project is now being continued in Japan. Professor Hut also continues to study the evolution of globular clusters in collaboration with colleagues at Princeton University, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Munich, Utrecht, Tokyo, Kyoto and elsewhere.