Background
Paolo Farinella was born on 13 January 1953 in Migliarino, close to Ferrara in Italy.
Paolo Farinella was born on 13 January 1953 in Migliarino, close to Ferrara in Italy.
He received his degree in 1975 at the University and the "Scuola Normale Superiore" of Pisa. After that he became a graduate student of Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo and worked as a research astronomer at the Observatory of Brera. From 1982 to 1998, he was a university researcher in Pisa, at the Department of Mathematics and at the Scuola Normale Superiore, teaching Physics and Celestial Mechanics.
In the period 1992–1994 he was visiting professor at the Nice Observatory with an European Space Agency "Giuseppe Colombo" fellowship.
Paolo Farinella died in Bergamo on 25 March 2000, due to heart failure. His work as planetary scientist changed the view of the solar system revolutionizing the way orbital and collisional histories of asteroids are seen.
He used his ideas in many fields of the space science that can be summarized in the following activities:
Planetary science: small bodies, collisions, satellites, dynamics and space debris;
Space geodesy and fundamental physics;
Science popularization, social commitment of concerned scientists. In 1980"s Farinella was among the first scientists to conjecture the Yarkovsky effect to be responsible for the migration of small asteroids from the main asteroid belt into different and potentially resonant orbits, with possible risks of impact on Earth.
He was very active into the astronomy popularization, writing dozens of articles that were mainly published by the Italian astronomical magazine “L"Astronomia”.
In June 2010, ten years after his death, an international workshop in his name was held in Pisa. In July 2015, after the New Horizons fly-by with Pluto, the New Horizons team gave the provisional name "Farinella" to a crater on Pluto, north of the Tombaugh Regio. Asteroid 3248 Farinella is named after him.
Paolo Farinella was a member of the Editorial Board of "Icarus" and an Associate Editor of "Icarus" and "Meteoritics and Planetary Science". He was a member of the International Astronomical Union (International Astronomical Union) and an affiliate member of the Division of Planetary Science (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society as well as a member of the Solar System Working Group of the European Space Agency.