Personnel News

New Staff Member - Year 2008

On 1 October David Brown, S.J., joined the staff of the Observatory. Father Brown obtained his bachelor of science in Physics at Texas A&M University and then, in 1991, he joined the Society of Jesus. After studies in philosophy at Fordham University, New York, and theology at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was ordained to the priesthood in 2002. He has completed his doctoral studies in astrophysics at the University of Oxford, Oxford, England and continues his work on the synthesis of stellar populations to model the ultraviolet excess in giant elliptical galaxies. Father Brown is a member of the New Orleans Jesuit Province and this year he was assigned by his superiors to the Vatican Observatory.

James Bowes, S.J., received a new destination from his superiors. We thank him for his service as Superior at the Jesuit Community in Tucson.

New Adjunct Scholars - Year 2008

Adjunct Scholars are individuals who have a major collaboration with members of the Observatory’s research staff and/or are carrying out a project for the Observatory itself.

On 9 February, Dante Minniti, a long-time collaborator of the Vatican Observatory, was appointed Adjunct Scholar. Minniti is an alumnus of the very first Vatican Observatory Summer School held in 1986. He subsequently received the first Martin F. McCarthy Jesuit Community Scholarship to begin his doctoral studies in astronomy at the University of Arizona. On completion of his doctorate, he pursued several post-doctoral appointments at the European Southern Observatory, whose headquarters are in Munich, Germany, and at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. Minniti is currently a full professor at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Santiago de Chile, where he was named Director of Research and Doctorate in May. He also received the 2008 Scopus Prize in the area of Physics and Astronomy from Elsevier and the Chilean Conicyt. He was awarded a Research Grant from BASAL Center for Astrophysics and Associated Technologies as Principal Investigator in the area of extrasolar planets and low mass stars.

On 20 June, Dr. Ileana Chinnici was appointed Adjunct Scholar of the Vatican Observatory. Chinnici is the first woman to have such an appointment. She is an astronomer at the Observatory of Palermo and an expert in the history of astronomy. She has published studies on Father Angelo Secchi, S.J., a renowned Jesuit astronomer of the 19th century, and on the Carte du Ciel (“Map of the Sky”). The Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory) was one of the participating observatories in the Carte du Ciel, and the historical telescope used for this survey is still in the Vatican Gardens at Castel Gandolfo. Chinnici is also one of the main organizers of the exhibit on antique astronomical instruments to be displayed at the Vatican Museums as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 celebrations. The exhibit is scheduled to open in mid-October.